IceAndBlood

  There are two things in life that can stop you from taking your own life, even if it is a few minutes away. One is a sense of purpose – when that unfinished task holds you back. Another is the deep love for a person –when you don’t want to leave that person alone, or you are scared of losing that person forever. Victor Frankl wrote this years ago but it took me years of agony and a drive to Shimla and back to Chandigarh, to finally assimilate the truth in it. Without beating about the bush, let me venture straight into my story. … People go for a vacation to take a short break. This year however, when a bunch of my friends decided to set off for Shimla-Manali, I looked upon it as a golden opportunity. I was not in for any short break. Fuck that. I was all for an absolute break from life. I didn’t plan on returning. Once we arrived, I discovered that the mountains were not so suited for jump-off. They could hardly be called steep, and even if you did dive, you would poss...

  “… So don’t forget any of it. Remember it all and overcome it. If you don’t overcome it, you’ll always be the kid whose soul never grows.” – The Boy who Fed on Nightmares by Moon-Yung   Have you ever felt that you have lost chunks of memories or pieces of your life? Gaps in a sequence that doesn’t add up? As if your system has simply deleted those memories, wiped them off your brain. You remember the feelings, the sting of pain or rage or breaking grief… but not what exactly happened. Flashes of colours, one or two words, sensations of heat or numbing cold, choking dust, taste of salty water… but nothing else. If you want to recall them, your mind does tricks. She weaves those pieces together, stitches the gaps with imagination, intuition and emotions and makes you feel contented with the stitched-up memories. Obviously, the contentment doesn’t last long. It happens to me often - with the memories I want to forget. My head does the wiping off for me. That should work, sh...

A few months ago, I went to visit a friend of mine who was admitted in a hospital for her messed-up sexual life. Naturally, I had to deal with her flabbergasted parents as well. I am no counselor and worse still, when it comes to parents. Anyhow, I tried. “See, I sincerely feel that the prurient mindset of today’s adolescents and youth regarding sexuality can be attributed, in some cases, and in some extent to apparently isolated incidents of sexual abuse in their childhood. It may appear to be distant but, it does have its impact…” I was going to blabber more in my flow of gospel-of-sex-education-and-awareness, being poked on and on by vexing questions of their daughter’s sexual life. But her mother interrupted- “Yes, I know. There had been one such incident”. Instinctively, she lowered her voice to a faint whisper. “She was then in class four. Her music teacher did ‘things’ to her. And just to think of that! She didn’t even tell me about it!” (OMG! Your eight-year old daughter didn...

  There is something heartrending about the word ‘melancholy’. Heartrending and musical and pure and beautiful. Just like rain. I don’t connect rain with melancholy as most people do. I never find anything sad about rain. But heartrending, musical, pure and beautiful? Of course it’s all of that! Yet somehow, these two words ring with almost the same frequency, within me. I cannot think of one without thinking of the other. Both are as innate to me as the colour of my eyes or the texture of my hair. I don’t even have to think – they simply occur to me. As natural as it could be. Where I live – a small peninsula at the southern end of Asia – it’s been raining day and night… for weeks at a stretch. It might be insensitive of me to say this – considering the havoc this has wreaked elsewhere, but these days have been the happiest of the year, to me. All night, I could hear the rhythmic sounds of rain – falling, falling, falling, on my gorgeous city, my vagrant city, my lost city and...

 One day, I caught her off-guard. “What the heck do you think you’re doing? Plunging the nib of your pen into your wrists like that!” I cried. She looked at me as if I had popped out of the earth just yesterday, and continued to scratch her almond skin with the pen till blood spouted. I looked on with horror, too stupefied to do anything. For a long time, I waited. I waited for her to open to me. I waited to win her trust. Then she told me the story behind her scars. A story of a dark childhood, a reign of terror and neglect, abusive love affairs and chronic depression. “Sometimes, you know, my eyes itch for blood.” She said, “Rich red of blood. I feel as if the incandescent beauty of this warm liquid flowing out of myself outshines my drab life. It renews my hope to live. The pain, the pangs of the cuts,” she panted as adrenaline rushed all through her, “they revive in me the will to live, when I don’t wish to live anymore.” That was my first encounter with them. The S...

A young lady called me up a couple of months ago. She didn’t know me but somehow, she had gotten the idea that I was a poor sad kid who has been quite depressed and needed a bit of sympathy. She introduced herself as someone who has been in the same shoes for quite a long time and guess what! The first thing she asked me was: “Are you sure you are not playing the victim card, or maybe, doing all this to gain attention?” Well, well. Now that’s a great start! In fact, a grand start! I felt a punch of laughter kicking at my tummy. I didn’t know how to answer her, or whether to answer at all.   Well, suppose someone confided in you that it was not going well for him/her. That he/she wanted to kill himself/herself and maybe even let’s suppose that he/she told you so, to gain attention. Suppose, someone did attempt suicide and however ridiculous it may be, did so to gain attention. Would you go and ask him/her, ‘Hey! Are you playing victim card?” Would you do that as someone ...

Let me begin with a story from my childhood. This was years ago, back when I was in class 4 or 5. I had been a quiet, shy and reserved child from my early years. I made few friends. It was the time when my parents finally decided to admit me into a pool car for travelling to and from school. The children tried to make me talk for the first few days but when that failed they started to laugh at me. “Don’t stare, idiot! Look out of the window!” or sometimes “Look at your feet. Yes. Stay like that.” They would command. Being meek and scared, I used to do as they told me, with teary eyes. One day, one of the elder children passed by me in the playground and as she did, she clapped me on my back and commented, “Abnormal child!” I stared at her as she disappeared in the distance. Years have passed, I have come to see and perceive life differently, I have taken hold of my life, I have made bunch of friends and that memory has reduced to nothing but a residue of ash. Yet, the sting of those wo...

  Cockroaches peeping over the water-pipes. Cobwebs at the ceiling corners. Red stains of tobacco spits all over the walls. I continue to gaze at the walls below the staircase as her head slowly disappears beneath the flight of stairs. The cobwebs have grown, the red stains have been replenished over the year, the cockroaches in our bathroom have given birth to tiny babies who scamper all over when the rooms get dark. They say cockroaches can survive anything, even an apocalypse. I wonder, are we cockroaches? Over the year, the world has turned upside down. Economy has crumbled. Peasants, who had been rotting in the hell of their lives, have risen in revolt. The relentless online classes have cost my 7-year old brother a pair of big heavy spectacles. Market is on fire. Maybe my eyes are burning too but I can’t feel it. Yes, for us, the cockroaches, who struggle through make it through a day, who fight endlessly to get up in the morning, to carry ourselves to the basin and force...