The Lifejacket Guy

On the first week of my (already too long) holiday, I allowed two close friends to convince me to go on a road trip. I hate road trips. I hate the car ride. I hate having to make conversation when all I want to do is throw up vile, motion-fed goop. And I hate having to be told that I am anti-social. But it was a water trip. And I love the water. So I said yes and took my vile humour, many many bottles of water (that never stayed cold), my beautiful camera and a potential to share the dil chahta hai attitude that my friends clearly, enviously celebrated.

But it was not what my dil chahtafied. I want to say that I warmed to the idea of having close company the last few months before I left home. But the truth was I was a complete, unexplainable grouch. I snarled every time the music changed to a tune I dint know and/or like. I sulked when the sun found its way through well-tinted glass of a luxury a/c car. And I hated the driver for not knowing (or pretending to not know) tamizh.

As a result, nothing was beautiful to me. Not the moss green roads. Not the chance of sighting wildlife in the middle of a highway. Not the mountains that sneaked behind every old, sleepy village. Nothing.

Nothing, that is, until we first sighted water.

For when we did (one day into our trip, on the banks of Kali), nothing was was not beautiful. With the clean, black river and the promise of being able to ride her, everything nothing was irksome anymore. Not the sun that shone harsher than it did in our silver Chevrolet. Not the fact that I was in a swimsuit that looked infinitely nicer in the trial room mirror of the store I bought it in. Not even the gawking, croaking, ghastly birds.

And just as soon as I found the river and the chance to salvage what I had resigned to be a forlorn trip, divine interference tainted the balance. To enter the river and ride the white (black) waters, I had to wear a lifejacket ensemble, complete with a yellow helmet.

I dont know about hydrophobics, but for those of us that love the water, having plastic shield us from an environment we love and thrive in, is not only suffocating and infuriatingly restricting, but also hateful. Sure, it is safe. Sure, we need it to keep us afloat. But its also easy to hate when you are being forced to wear one whilst riding a river (you think) you know you can handle.

And I hated it. I hated the lifejacket. And I hated its clumsy, suffocating promise to save me.

Perhaps I should introduce the lifejacket guy before going too far with this. This guy is every mother's right guy. He is safe. Involved (without being irresponsible). Funny (without being crude). Honest (without being tactless) and strong (without being overbearing). He walks the dog, helps set the table and holds your hand in front of the father without it ever seeming offensive. When he has not been found for us (by fat armed auntys that insist they know the way to a successful marriage - yes, even as their own wilts to a sorry end with thinner, longer nosed secretaries), he finds us.

And when he finds us, we find ourselves. At least, we find the parts of ourselves that wants to settle down, build picket fences and raise chubby babies whose drool we know we will have help cleaning. We imagine the brass pots and the yellow kitchens, clean wooden flooring and the enlarged, matted posters that we want on our bottle green walls. We plan vacations and sights, draw names on the sides of our notepads and try saving email addresses with names that we think we might have should we (and we should!) marry this guy.

But (and this, like most buts, is a sad but), you see, when I was on that raft, cruising the white (black) waters, trying hard (and succeeding) to allow the sun and the Kali to make up for the fact that I had a suffocating helmet on, we reached a spot which our Nepali head rafter called the swimming pool. Those of us that could (and wanted to) swim, he said, could jump off. We were allowed to float free within range of the raft. And so long as we agreed to have our safety gear on, were allowed to swim the waters between the dangerous, lifejacket-needing waters.

Being the sort that always wants more (or slips to oblivion after foolishly trying), I put on my most persuasive smile and asked Mr. Gangotree (although between the two of us, I had seen more of the Ganga than he. He was a coorg rafter) if I could jump in the water without my helmet. After five required turn downs, he allowed me to kiss the waters and hug the sun without having to awkwardly float on the river on my back to fight my water claustrophobia.

Those twenty stolen, helmetless minutes were the best minutes of my trip.

Not the safest. Not the rightest. Not the most honest. But they were the best. Because they allowed me to be. exactly as I wanted to be. without question. without reason.

This is not to say that I did not wear the helmet after the twenty minutes. Or even that I did not want to. Safety is good. Important. Desired, even. But when safety is thrust upon you when you think you dont need it, it becomes something a settle instead of all the glorious things it should in fact be.

As a result, my lifejacket guy is both the right guy and the settling guy, with disarming consistency, depending on when it was you met him in your life. If you were waiting to be rescued at sea, searching for the one warmth that could get you, he was your right guy. If you were a swimmer at the banks of a river that was 12 feet deep at worst and the only access you had to it was if you wore a helmet, he was your safe, settling guy.

And so, for those of us that dont want that lifejacket guy when he comes into our life and are really fine with clean, unshared rooms (where we can stack the walls with snippets from our ex-ridden past), the lifejacket guy is the suffocating helmet ruining our sun basking on handle-able waters.

Perhaps we know that somewhere, we need to know this guy to save ourselves. We know that we will be out of the currentless pool soon and when we are there, we can only hope that he will find us too. For no faded orange-yellow is non coveted when we see it for all the beautiful things it really is.

But for now, in the swimming pool we know we can handle, it is enough to be there. not thinking. the sun on our eyes. water waiting to be squirted. helmetlessly swimming.

Dear Must Have

W came into my life when I already had my haves. Long, old haves who I knew and loved in a comfortable tee way that only everyone understood. So when she walked in, she wasnt needed. Most definitely not wanted or desired. And certainly not the have I thought would be the must have.

But she was. In every wonder-years way. She laughed when I laughed. Cried when I cried. And all my years with her, and everything that happened in them, had something to do, irrevocably, unexplainably, with (and to) gorgeous her.

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Dear W,

Have you read Shantaram? Its a book that talks of my city by the sea. It talks of the mafia and of loss and of a million things that take a man to a journey that breaks and then makes him. But more than all of that, its a book about love. And how, sadly, truly, its the core of everything that we do and dont do with our lives.

I dont know if I agree with giving love that much credit (I dont know if I can give anything that much credit) but i think that there is always something about giving something (anything) a piece of your heart that makes a bit of you stay there in return. and then, no matter what you do after or where you go. it stays. with that person (if you are lucky) or with that bit of that person that you hold in your heart.

And each time that person hurts you. Or time and distance makes that person (and you, in all fairness) change (in ways that make that person become less and less familiar), you find yourself wondering why you cannot just unlove them. Why it is so hard for you to step back and recognise what the head states clearly and the heart knows. Why you cannot see them for what they are - as new people who dont (and cannot) hold the love you have for them.

I have thought that with everyone I have loved. I have asked myself why people change. And why, when only one of us change, its so so so hard to just accept that and let go. And I have found answers in simply letting go most times. There have been friends and lovers that I have loved and lost. And I have seen (or learnt to see) reason in it. Peace, even.

And then there are some loves that you cannot let go. That you continue to hold in your head and your heart. That are tied to every breath you take. That are part of every sad tear you shed in your soul. There are some loves that you have given more than just your love to. The loves that dont give you peace in letting go. Even when you know that there is nothing to let go. Even when you know that they are gone. Even when you know that there is only hurt in holding on. Even when you know all of this. And that love tears at your heart and holds you captive. And burns you and makes you and breaks you all at once, you cannot let it go. You cannot step back and see it walk too far.

With these loves, sometimes the intensity of this desire is faltering. Sometimes, you want them and need them and love them and completely need to know everything about them at all times. Sometimes, you do without the details, hold them in your heart, share silences and cold bodies, speak uninanities and lie low. Sometimes you hold them in the middle of a granite room at summer's peak and need to hold them longer. Sometimes its enough if you share a thought. a silent word on hot sand. Sometimes you need more than a song from the past sung out of tune.

I dont know where I am going with this. And I dont know if i really have the courage to go anywhere with this. We have been in the lie low phase for too long now for me to be able to snap back and write much more. But you need to know that even when I am mad at you. Even when I think its so so so damned sad that we have locked each other out. Even when I know that there are other souls that you share and love (perhaps more than me, as i see it in my current insecurity). Even when I know that I should let you be. Even when I search for you when you are not there. Even as every single thing that we do and dont do add up to this large, large, almost invisible but very very real elephant in our midst. Even in all of those completely frustrating, completely soul scarring times, I love you.

I love every bit of you. In a way that scares, soothes and saves me. I love you with a heart that expands with every small thing you do when you are there. and love you with a desire that bloats and gloats in insane proportions, threatening often to undo me, when you are not. I try not interfering. I try unconditional. I try everything that allows me to be whoever it is you need me to be to be able to love you as I do. But every single time, I find myself not loving enough. Falling short. Almost always seeming different when I come out of it in front of you. It seems to me that the way I feel about you, that deliciously precious way that holds me captive, is not one you understand or even allow yourself to recognise.

For that, I try not loving you. I try hating everything that makes you that way, because clearly the love i feel for you disallows me the ability to hate you. But yet, as much as I try, I still love you. still need you to define me and my capacity to feel such intensity so constantly, by just being. still somehow, need to know that you are there, even if only to break my heart.

You know my subscribed reasoning to the 12 people in our lives. Well, you were the least disguised of my 12 people. And for that, I will always be grateful. To you. and Fate, that road that I so thankfully allowed to have me led to you.

So know this. You have my heart. Yes, even when it hurts that you cannot see it.


Me.
Six beautiful summers after I found you. and your words.


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Dear Yous

There is an ancient understanding of the nature of our beings that subscribes to the fact that Fate allows us, all of us, three friends. three great loves. three teachers that show us the way. and three people we hate (with reason or otherwise).

The same understanding also hints at the fact that Fate, like everything else, is nothing but a product of our choice. A result of our own reasonings to choose from the countless options given to us each instant. every instant.

So, essentially, every instant, we make choices that change and mould everything and everyone we can (or want to) be. and when we make our choices, our choices make us.

Adding one and two, like are often told to, each of these 12 people that Fate affords us are 12 people we have in fact chosen for ourselves, almost always without knowing of our own decisions. Since they dont come with signs on their foreheads (like they should do, if you ask me), they come disguised. To make our choices harder, and therefore, truer, in some sense. And often, we dont know of them until it is too late and we are too far gone to know we know them still. or in the same way.

Most of my words are for these people. Those that I know and dont know because, perhaps, in that unseeming manner that we seem to assume with those that we think we are close to, I have not allowed myself to see in all these places where I have only looked.

But these dear yous are not my dear yous alone. And often, they are for those in my head rather than those I have met, loved and lost. This, of course, is not to say that I have not loved. Or that I have not lost. And sadly, un-subconciously, there are words in these words athat are true and personal. And yous in these words who are real people, drinking thier chai in earthern pots, doing whatever it is they do to live. breathe. be.

I have known these yous. Some of them, I dont. Some more of them, I dont anymore. But most of them, I dont think I knew were yous when they were. And when I lost them, or just forgot to know them anymore (as I will have to shamelessly admit to, because its an anonymus blog), I thought could have been yous.

But all of them are yous that we all have. The could have, should have, might have been yous that we have loved. sometimes lost. sometimes wished we had lost earlier than we did.

This is my list of dear yous. That perhaps should rightfully have been written on old parchment with tear blotted ink, read with cold trembling hands. But because I am who I am, and all that I am, are being published in light almost gray yellow (which, incidentally, is manjal in tamizh), on a cold, black, comforting to me blog.

To you, my dear yous.

Black. Minima

I never had black clothes (Madras is too hot to have black. and well, if you can afford it, clothes). the little black dress was lost on me (I am a shapeless, thintotheextentofbeingtransparent-white top person), you see. When I have to be formal, I am unblack. When I eat too much and my face looks older, fatter and happier than it ought to, I tell myself I should wear black, but refrain. Preferring podgy to black.

So, no. I am not a black fan.

My room is filled everywhere with every sound, light, face, smile and frown that has made me all I am. I try the minima sometimes ("I really like neutral, basic tones. I want absolutely nothing in my room") and fail miserably ("Amma, where can I get more double sided tape? This part of the wall is too bare. And I am yet to paste Austria").

So, you know now that I am not minima either.

So, why do I begin my now-uncountable attempt at a blog with both?

My dearest, oldest jumper (not sweater. not pullover) is black. a soft black that hugs and holds me with knowledge that is inherent and kind, deep and wise.

and it is minimal. it is what i wear to every party. every theatre. over every staid gray 10 year old tee and every blue and yellow ritu kumar i own.

And these dearyous, are like that warm, black sweater.

Known. Undone in parts. Familiar. And yet, altogether new every time they are worn.