Writing Our Stories.

In my last post, I've said that I've read two amazing books last week and that I would write about them.

I’ve read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and If You Feel Too Much by Jamie Tworkowski. The overly sensitive person that I am, I ended up shedding a tear or two while reading both the books. The books were so truthful that I could not help talking about them all the week. Every person I met and everywhere I went, I talked about these books.

I love Elizabeth Gilbert. Call it serendipity or my idea to feel better, I have always read her when I was hitting rock bottom. I remember reading Eat, Pray, Love when I was in college, but it was just a good book. A book that I liked and that was all about it. But the first time I ever had a major breakdown, I picked Eat, Pray, Love again. This time it wasn't just a good book, it was a voice that was talking to me, reminding me that there is hope. I read it once. Twice. I felt better. I watched her TED talks and I read more though I still haven't finished reading The Signature of All Things. When I got to know about Big Magic, I knew I had to read it. Funnily, I read it when I was going through another breakdown, and this time, it was liberating. I read it on my way to work, and I read it before I fell asleep. I read it during breaks, and I read it at every opportunity I could find. I understood it. Loved it. Talked about it. And secretly, I found my lost courage from it.

You know there are instances when you find mentors just around you. And sometimes you don't. Sometimes they are in your city. Sometimes you meet them every day. In my case, it is different. In spite of the miles of distance between Hyderabad and New Jersey, Elizabeth is my mentor, though she is absolutely unaware of existence.

Thank you for writing this book, Elizabeth! I needed it. Just the way I needed Eat, Pray, Love. I've learned so much from it and I know there is so much more to learn. I will live my life with stubborn gladness and it is a promise I've made to myself this year.

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Jamie Tworkowski's If You Feel Too Much has made me realize that there are people like me. That there are people who waltz their way through pain and emerge stronger. That there are people who never give up despite what happens to them. That people struggle and fight.

I have been following 'To Write Love on Her Arms' for a quite bit of time now and I honestly believe that what Jamie has been doing for people is wonderful. When someone told me that Jamie wrote a book and that I must read it, I was a little apprehensive. I thought I did not need a book that would make me sad. Funnily again, this book was anything but sad. It has beautiful stories and every story teaches you something.

Jamie has always been a strong advocate of urging people to not to give up on their story. And this is amazing because we are all carrying so many stories inside us but we either give up or never talk about them. It is time we do. It is time we write our own stories. Live our own stories.

P.S. Elizabeth Gilbert, you rock my world.

The Week of Epiphanies

I am glad I could call it the week of epiphanies.

I have accomplished quite a bit this week and met most of my deadlines. I am happy. I have read two amazing books (I promise to write about them in the next post) this week and I feel so liberated. I love books like these - books that me cry, books that keep me up in the night, books that break my heart, books that make me ponder. I think only good books and sunsets can have that effect on me.

This evening, as I sat down to write a post on the multiple epiphanies, I figured I would only pick two of them and announce it to the world. Why? Because why the hell not!

1. My idea about the love of my life has always been slightly distorted. I fell in love for the first time even when it was an age forbidden to be in love. It was not with some guy, though. It was with Literature. It was with the world of books. Of stories. Right from my childhood, I have cultivated a habit of reading before I sleep every night. Even if my options were limited to Tinkle. I put myself in the picture often by writing silly poems and stories that my mother pretended to enjoy for the sake of her child.

I will be honest, though. I took my writing for granted. I abandoned it, stopped having conversations with it. I stopped nurturing it. Even worse, accepting it. But it did not leave me. It was by my side on the days when I was self-absorbed. And on the days when I was drowning in darkness. It did not break my heart like a certain boy did. Nor did it stop reminding me about its purpose in my life. That's how cool it is!

It probably, and will always be the only love of my life. As long as it wants to be. I am delightful for discovering our mutual love.

2. Like I already said, I could be a little self-absorbed sometimes. On the days when I am, I think the world revolves around me. It is days like those that force me to assume I am the only person who goes through pain. For the longest time, I thought all the first world problems were happening in my courtyard only and that it was the most intriguing part about me. I was making a huge deal about the pain I go through.

Well, it looks like every second person goes through pain. There is nothing sensational about the kind I was facing or whining about, but what really is my forte is the ability to write (It doesn't matter even if it is cringe worthy) even while enduring the pain. And that, definitely, and has to be the most intriguing part about my personality. I am not letting something like pain, fear, anguish signify my personality. We all have intriguing personalities. Mine is this, yours could be something else. But even the most intriguing part about us vanishes if we succumb to the chaos in our life.

I would not let mine vanish. Not in this lifetime.

P.S. What is the matter with the radio channels in Hyderabad? Have they stopped playing music or what? I waited for thirty minutes for a decent song but all that was played were advertisements. Sigh!

Anyway, you all have a great weekend.

The Demons In Our Head.

Often there are demons in our head we have to fight battles with.

These demons cripple us. They begin living with us. It does not matter how much we try to push them out. They stay. They hover. They make our head their home.

One such demon I fight is love. People who read my blog or know me well enough know how much I think about love, or how happy I am when two people in love have a really happy ending. I derive so much happiness from the little stories my friends or family tell me about it. But in this post, I am not referring to the romantic love alone. I am not even talking about the platonic one. I am talking about the love that comes in various forms. In the form of friends, family, coworkers, strangers we meet every day.

It is strange that over the past few days, weeks, months. Wait, you know what? I actually lost the count of it. I have come to believe that love is a bad space to be in. And this is coming from a person who weeps every time a romantic comedy ends. Not a cool thing.

I began to believe that love is a lie. That when someone loves me and then stops loving me, I have done something utterly terrible for them to stop loving me overnight. That when I attract unhealthy friends who convince me to do things I hate, I blame my love for them. Never did I blame my poor judgment of choice. Or when some random relative gives me advice or forces me into things I hate, I forget to stand up for myself. I blame love for it. In fact, I blame it for every bad thing that happens in my life.

That is the thing about the most of us. We forget that our problems with the people we love are the problems we have with them. Not with love. The problems we claim to be problems are because we stop fighting for them, we stop talking about them. We stop communicating. We avoid them. And what happens when we avoid them? We make space for sadness and demons.

I have this wonderful, a little special friend who said something a few days ago. Confront your devils before they take your soul for ransom. I don't know what he meant when he said that, or in what context he updated that status, but I knew that I have to really deal with my demons (or devils) first. Little by little, probably, but I won't let them stay in my mind for things I blame myself for.

I hope you all fight the demons in your head (We all have different ones. Yours and mine might be different) and help the people around you to fight theirs. There will be no end to our struggles if we aren't in this together.

P.S. I hope you all had a great Sunday. I look forward to nothing but Monday. Gosh, I am such a Monday person.

Words.

I looked at the stars and wondered why.

I fervently hoped the endless sky would heal me.

I panicked, strode across the room restlessly.

And when I couldn't fill the void, I let words pour out.

It was words that fixed me, even when you couldn't.

A Weekend Rant: On Time and Life

Weekend is here, and for some reason I am quite excited about it after a long time. I am not really a weekend person. Anyone who knows me really well, totally knows that I am a Monday or a Wednesday person. But let’s not talk about it for the moment. I don't want to ruin your holiday spirit.

It is October. Strange.

It is October. Still strange.

Oh my god, if you don’t understand what I mean, let me tell you again. It is OCTOBER. We are just two months away from the New Year. 2016. This year will soon come to and end. So scary. The next year we'll all turn a year older, parents will shove more responsibilities. But we'll still be clueless as ever.

The last time I checked, I was still celebrating the New Year. How did time fly so quick? As I look back, I realized I have changed jobs and I am longer a new employee at my current workplace. Ouch! I like to be new because being new is so cool. And now that the flying time has robbed me of that privilege, I don’t know what else it planned for me for the next two months. Apart from sulking. Don't plan anymore surprises for me, time, you have give me enough this year and they were lame. Horrid. As bad as you are.

I mean do you even realize how many TV series and books are to be devoured and there is so little time for all of it? No, you don’t.

Go on, time. Keep flying. Don’t wait for anyone. One day, we’ll ban you. Just the way beef was banned for no reason whatsoever.

Snoopy gets me. Here, look - Snoopy Gets Sunaina

P.S. As the title suggests, this post isn't much about my life.

Happy weekend, you all.

Give Up, Romantic.

I am your regular girl.

I want to be in the sort of love that I can swoon about on Instagram. Yet I want the sort of love that I want to hide from the rest of the world.

I am your regular girl. I am confused about the sort of love I want.

Contrary to the popular belief, I am not really a huge fan of good looking men. Not that I really mind them, and I don't really disapprove of a wonderful man with brains at the right place and has a beautiful face too. Some perks are good. 

My idea of the perfect man is the one who could woo me with his words. As a writer, I love soaking into the splendour of words that sometimes ruin me. I sign up for things like that - men who are all about words. Unfortunately, about no action.

No, I don't like the mysterious danger that lurks along with that sort of love. Because that isn't the kind that goes on Instagram, remember? For years, I tormented myself looking for the grand, maddening, I-will-kill-you-with-my-love sort of love only to realize it was too bad for me. So, one fine morning I wiped my slate clean.

I wrote, no expectations. Zilch. Nada.

The days turned sunnier and rosy. That's when I met him. In the beginning, he seemed like a person I could easily avoid. But, he ended up being in my face most of the time, and no matter where I went, he was available at every nook and corner of the earth. Maybe he made himself available for me. Maybe he did not. I hated him for reasons I could not even fathom but hating him was easy. So, I hated. Avoided. Ignored. Hid. Ran.

Things changed, of course. You must have watched enough romantic comedies to figure out what happens when a mysterious guy walks into the life of a girl smoothly and glides away just the way he walks in. He didn't even belong to the section of guys I liked, and no don't remind me about wiping my slate clean. I could give a lot of reasons, but the fact was that I was heartbroken again because the words I fell for were the ones that drowned me in the end. Now, I would blame all the movies and books I've devoured, and sometimes went overboard with picturing what if my life would be like if I was a character from a book. Fiction ruined me, just the way I ruined my expectations with the most unrealistic forms of love.

The sort of love I was looking for did not happen to me though it happened to a lot of people around me. I stopped believing in the sheer presence of love and the ways it could alter the definition of my life. What was I thinking anyway? My life wasn't like 'Notting Hill' and it definitely is never going to be like 'Say Anything.' So, I had to separate love from my love life and live my life.

Sadly, some things are not meant to be. If I was Taylor Swift, I would have sung a sad melody for you, but I am not and don’t fancy Taylor much, so I figured I must Instagram the heck out of my life and never bother about a guy I’d put on Instagram. The clouds seem blue all over again.

Of Writing Letters and Pen Friends.

I was eight when I made a first pen friend. I distinctly remember writing letters and posting them in a red-coloured post box that was a little far from home. I made two more pen friends over a period of time and wrote different letters to the three of them. I loved receiving letters with doodles and smileys on the corner of the letters. Sometimes, they came with shimmering stickers, and they were more loved. One summer vacation, I visited my grandparents. That year was warmer than usual, and the flowers in our garden were blooming better than ever. I began writing letters to my friends -- I wrote to them about how I relished the mangoes and sorbets that my grandmother fed me, and I wrote to them complaining how my brothers never let me play cricket along with them, forcing me to be a silent spectator every time they played. I narrated in detail how much I loved taking early morning walks along the stream and glide past the high walls embraced with colourful bougainvillaea trees. I remember very well, that I suggested them to read Enid Blyton's books which happened to be my latest found love then. I guess I still remember the contents of the letter only because they were the last letters I sent to them. As soon as I returned home after the vacation, my father was transferred to a different city. In the process of worrying about a new school, new uniform, and new classmates, it absolutely slipped out of my mind that I had to inform my friends that I was moving to a different city. What's worse? I lost their addresses too! For a person who moved often, and changed seven schools, losing things wasn't new. But this time, I was rather displeased with my carelessness. Because there was something comforting about writing letters to people whose names and faces were unknown. We had pen names, remember? There was something ethereal about friendships that withstood miles of distance. And there was something funny about describing how your dog would attack the cats and receive a response that talked about such simple things. That is the magic of handwritten letters, I believe. When I was in school, I knew a lot of people who had pen-friends. I read a lot of such stories too, in a magazine called Gokulam, which was pretty popular after Tinkle. I barely see anyone writing letters now. I am afraid, I see no one. The fact that people have forgotten the art of writing beautiful letters makes me cringe. Why did we stop writing letters? Why did we stop describing the beauty of nature in letters to friends who aren't familiar with the weather in our part of the country? We cannot blame WhatsApp and Twitter for this. They still do not warrant the excuse that we stopped writing letters. I could be really selfish when I am hoping one could preserve the lost heritage of writing letters; wondering if we could ever bring back long, handwritten letters into fashion. The joy we derive from reading letters that we've received as children is quite something. I think even when we get old and have a troubling eyesight, there will be nothing more comforting than words and letters that talk so much about our history and the life we lived. 

P.S. This year, I have written three letters and received two.