IceAndBlood

  “… 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...