Still searching for me...

Every morning I wake up and struggle to define who I am. Am I the sad divorcee in a melee of perfect couples? Am I the girl on the verge of living her life on her own terms? Am I the person who chickened out and made the easier choices? Or am I the woman who's carving her own path, one little step at a time?

You'd think I'd know by now. I'm 33. You'd think I'd have it sorted out by now, but I don't. There are days when I can't even answer the basic question of whether I want to live at all or not.

And that's where I have been this last week. Wondering if I wanted to live at all. If it wouldn't just be easier to pack my bags and call it a day. To melt away slowly into the dark silences and not have to face another day. It's been a while since I was here. And it scared the hell out of me. After all, what kind of a mother is willing to leave her child behind in that most absolute, most scarring way?

A mother who isn't perfect. A woman who isn't always feeling strong. A girl who doesn't feel all that brave when the bright sun shines in her eyes every morning. I thrived on being told how strong I was. On how beautifully I had sailed through my divorce. What a brilliant job I was doing of raising my son. And as each compliment healed a wound, it also inflicted another one. I had to live up to that image of the strong, perfect mother. Whether I felt it or not. So much pressure built around it that I tried my best to brush aside all the little dark spots, all the lapses into sadness. I had to be little miss sunshine after all and ride away on my pink bicycle with my son sitting on the carrier and happy little puppies chasing us. I had to be the golden sample, the one who got it right.

That's a lot of pressure to put on anyone. To put it on yourself borders on madness.

Since one of the mandates I set for myself when I started this blog has been to be 100% honest, I'll say at the outset that I have considered packing my bags and taking the road out of life before. But it was different. In my younger days it was an inability to handle life. When I finally realized I would have to leave my marriage it was the feeling that I would not be able to face another day with my sense of self shattering into a thousand pieces.

This time it was a wake up call. Letting me know it's ok. It's ok to not be a perfect mom. It's ok to hate your kid for a while. It's ok to hate that your life is so different from what you'd wanted. It's ok that sometimes you're such a stark raving lunatic that your son looks scared shitless when he sees you. It's ok to cry as if every breath is draining out of your body. It's ok to curl up and feel a depth of sadness that you never knew existed. And it's ok to stay there for days, as many days as you need. It's ok to hear Everybody Hurts on loop. You don't have to be strong. You don't have to have your shit together. You don't have to be there for everyone. You just need to show up for you. And the rest is ok.

When all the drama was stripped away, all my body and mind were saying was TAKE A BREAK. Sit down. Breathe. Just leave everything else behind for a while. And a week later, slowly, I am crawling out from under the covers. Have I figured it all out? Do I have all the answers? No. But I know this, the search never ends. Every day I will redefine who I am. Each day I will be someone new, and that's also OK.

My son's grandfather

It was barely a year after my sister's wedding that her father in-law called me aside at a family gathering and sat me down. 'Humne tumhari poems padhi', I read your poems he said. After a brief moment of confusion about what he was referring to I felt a hot, red blush spread over my face. I hadn't given him any poems. I'd given my sister a bunch of poems which I'd hoped to publish as a book. Words and phrases came back in flashes to my 21 year old brain. These poems weren't meant for him. Among other scribbling I remembered there was one about two lovers tangled together. Could the earth please just split and swallow me whole right now I thought? I was ready for him to deliver a scathing speech on the rubbish youngsters write.

'Tum bahut acha likhti ho', you write very well he said. You have a talent. It's your duty to keep writing. I was stunned. Definitely not what I had expected from a 77 year old white-haired man who swore by Swami Vivekanand!

Over the years as I came to know my son's Baba, he became one of my biggest cheerleaders where writing was concerned. Every single time we met, he asked me if I was writing. During the years of my divorce, when I met him less and had virtually stopped writing, he insisted that I must write every day. He told me to read as much as I can, and I in turn tried to introduce him to my favored genre of books. He may not have agreed with them but he always read what I gave him and then had lively debates with me, providing counterpoints to my views. Everyone would stand around saying 'tumhari class le li Pitaji ne', but those were the moments I enjoyed most in my brother in-laws house.

As my son started visiting there more often he became his grandfather, his Baba. He laughed when my son made a birthday card with a blob of paint calling it kauve ki potty. He saw his willfulness before I did. He empathized with what I was going through.

I couldn't meet him half as much as I wanted to. And now that he's gone, I keep seeing him sitting there telling me 'likha karo'. His laugh was infectious. It's what I miss most. It's what my son misses most too. My son used to say 'bhagwan ji mujhse baat karte hain'. Now he says that his Baba talks to him from the sky, tells him he's ok up there, flying and free.

Many people talk of how well-read my son's Baba was. How learned and evolved. I don't doubt it. Yet what I always saw was a man with an incredible spirit, a love for life, a refusal to let anything bring him down. Someone with an innate sense of right and wrong, of fairness. A person who could empathize with everyone. A man who didn't judge anyone. It was interesting that he was one of the few people with whom I could be myself and feel that he saw me, for who I really was.

I wanted to write to him when our chances to meet reduced. I wish I had started sooner. I only got one letter across to him before he left and there was no time for a reply. I know that with time his memory will fade, no matter how hard I try to hold on. I figure the best thing I can do to honour him, to honour what he meant to me and my son is to write. To write everyday, to live my life honestly, to be the best person I can be. If I can be 1/10th the person he was, that will be my tribute to him. I am grateful that I had the chance to know someone like him. I am blessed that he was my son's grandfather, his Baba. 

The Fat Girl In The Corner

Recently I've been coming across some interesting things around bodies and stereotypes. I have hardly spoken about such things because I have spent my life being the "fat" girl and always thought if I voiced my opinion people would think I'm being too sensitive. Yet I would find myself incensed by the fact that everyone in the universe thought it was okay for them to laugh at me, to crack a joke, to tell me for my "own good" how important it was for me to lose weight. Friends, colleagues, strangers, lovers.

When did I start thinking of myself as fat and ugly I wonder? I know I didn't think it as a kid. Was it in 8th grade when the guy I had a massive crush on rejected me saying I was too fat for him? Was it when my sister's well meaning friend told me while helping me dress up for my birthday that I was so pretty I could be a model if only I lost weight? Or when the ex said I wasn't good enough cos heads didn't turn when I entered a room? Was I fat because I ate too much or did I eat too much because people had told me I'm fat so many times that I had started to believe it at a deep gut level?

I know only that most of my social life was an agonizing debacle of trying to find outfits that hid my fat and made me look good. Of going from pillar to post putting every face pack and night cream I could on my face to get rid of the angry red blotches of acne. Smiling at every fat joke. Some times even cracking some before someone else could hoping that would be less humiliating. Telling every man in my life that I was ashamed of my body, trying to hide it. I remember feeling grateful if they chose to be accepting. Grateful if a man was interested in me. I spent a lifetime undermining everything I have to offer in a relationship and settling for any man who was willing to accept my ugliness.

Movies, television, advertisements, books, all of them only speak of the fat, the ugly, the acne ridden as bumbling idiots or tragic heroes. There are the geeks who turned into beauties or just fumbled upon a good looking partner. There is never a person with a different face/body type who is the main protagonist with no excuses. I saw a movie recently in which an actress tells the hero that she can torment him and take revenge now for what he did to her twelve years ago because "tab main moti aur bechaari thi, ab main sexy aur powerful hoon". Those are the messages sent out to us every second of every day. We don't even realize it. I've had friends talk about their ideal woman and size was always a consideration. When did we as a society get so obsessed with how a person looks? To the point that its become one of the highest causes of depression and eating disorders. Where we have multi-million dollar industries to help us change how we look in every conceivable way.

Every day I see an article helping me define my body shape, pear, apple etc etc. Or one telling me how to get a bikini body. Or what kind of pants I should wear to minimize the debilitating effects of my shortness and wide waistline. And then I saw a line that said How to get a bikini body - Take your body, put a bikini on it. A switch flicked in my head. I was done with the bullshit.

I went on a holiday and I tried my best to wear what I WANTED to wear. Not what I should or what looked better. It was terrifying and liberating. It is time that people get over who's fat, short, dark, ugly. Really. I'm sure you have something better to worry about.

Here's Saif Ali Khan telling us his fascinating take on "ugly" actors. Saif, I'm ready to see a film about real people, however fat or ugly they are!


So, your wife told you that looking beautiful in Bollywood is more important than acting.
That’s a joke. She can afford to say that because she is beautiful and a good actor. Actually, I do think that it is equally important if not more. Because everyone is so fit, It is a visual medium. And I don’t think anyone wants to see a film about an ugly guy who is giving a great performance. We are not so mature as an industry yet. We are still trying to make beautiful films about beautiful people, unless it’s a niche film.

The voters who couldn't vote

I wanted to vote today. I started out at 9:30 am, found my election booth and stood in line. For the next hour I was shunted from one person to the other who told me my name is not on the list. I'd gotten a new card made last year at my new residential address. Yet my name was not on the list. I was asked if I had gone online and checked if my name was on the list. I hadn't, and that I admit was my mistake. I had voted several times before and didn't think my name could have gone off the list. But it had.

"Jahan pehle rehte the wahan ke booth par naam hoga aapka, transfer nahin hua hoga". So off I went to the booth I had always voted at. Found my mum, dad and sister. But my name was nowhere to be found. I had filled up my form, submitted it, picked up my election card. My name had been removed from the previous address but not been put on the list for my current address. I was not on the voters list.

I came back to my current poll booth and asked what can be done. How can we address this issue so that I may be allowed to vote? It had been 3.5 hours of running around and I was really frustrated. I really wanted to vote. I was given numbers of the SDM, sector officer and a bunch of other people. I called them. None of them could help me. No one had the discretionary powers to issue a letter allowing me to vote. One person asked me to come to him after 15th December.

By now I was at my wits end. In the last few hours I had seen innumerable cases of peoples names not being on the voter's list. Someone people had valid election cards and were standing there but their records had mysteriously been deleted, without any intimation or action undertaken by them. One old man had been voting for the last 40 years but was told his name was not on the list this time. He had stayed in the same house and voted in the same place. There was no reason his name wasn't on the list.

The only explanation repeatedly given to me was that someone must have come to your house to confirm you address. I said they hadn't. I was told I must have been out of the house. Is that valid reason to strike my name off a voters list? Even Flipkart and courier delivery guys call and come or come back again. Shouldn't I have been given a call, or had someone return or even leave a note telling me how to take it forward? I should have gone online and checked, but what about the scores of people in our country who don't have access to the internet? Don't they deserve to be on a voters list?

I saw so many people being turned away today, rich, poor, old, young, all out to exercise their right to vote. All people with valid election cards in their hands. Shouldn't there be some authority that can consider these cases and allow them to vote?

How do names mysteriously go off the list or get deleted? I got my card a year ago, why doesn't that ensure my place on the list? There were reporters from a prominent daily newspaper at the polling station who came to ask me what happened. Apparently it's happening across the city they said. They'd seen the same situation at all the booths they had visited. If I saw over a hundred such cases happen in front of me over a few hours at two polling stations I can't imagine the total number across the city.

There are so many campaigns urging us to vote. Yet here were hundreds of voters being turned away due to errors in the functioning of the electoral offices. Is that then a fair election? Is it not possible to make this system easier?

I spent a total of 5 hours doing this. Not everyone would. I really wanted to vote.

Nighttime ruminations

I've been tossing and turning for the last three hours trying to sleep. The harder I try the more elusive it is. In the meantime I've indulged in a little pity party. Maybe it's the fact that I spent all of yesterday making love to my toilet ( if you can call a stomach infection that). Maybe it's the copious amounts of white bread and butter I've consumed as an aftermath of the toilet love affair, which my body is not at all used to anymore. Or maybe it's the fact that I'm severely pms-ing ( honestly I think women should be given a five day holiday from life every month! And for any one who doesn't 'get' it, please try a crazy-ass hormone injection and you'll know). Either ways I have in the last three hours dug up every single insecurity and convinced myself its true.

So yes I :
1. Suck in bed
2. Don't know how to write
3. Am a horrible, negligent mother
4. Will never find love
And of course
5. None of my friends actually "like" me. They just put up with me

I figured instead of wasting more time I should just write it all down and make a counter list of things that may keep me from going over the edge.

1. I hauled my ass out of a shitty marriage
2. Good, bad or ugly I am taking care of my son and he's a kick-ass kid so I must be doing something right
3. People are paying me to write so it can't be that bad
4. I travelled to NYC, Vietnam and Thailand. I did it on my own money. I didn't let my fears and evil thoughts hold me back. I had an awesome time doing it.
5. That's it. In this moment it's all I can think of.

Right now, just for tonight, life sucks. Tomorrow I will try to redefine it, to find a way around it. But tonight I will hope that this blog purges me enough to get some shut eye.

Infidelity is a bitch!

It's taken me a while to understand why my divorce was not easy or why it took me longer to 'get over' it than people expected it to. Well one, because they have no idea what I went through. And two because there is little that lacerates the mind, body and soul like the breaking of trust.

When two people come together with the express purpose of being committed exclusively to each other, infidelity strikes hard and deep. It makes the person cheated upon doubt everything about themselves. Their bodies, their personalities, their entire beings. The first thing that happens is you wonder what you did wrong. But you didn't. You did nothing wrong. You did not go out of your relationship willingly looking for another partner. No matter how fat you are, no matter if your sex life sucked, no matter if you're the smartest pea in the pod or the ugliest thing that walked. You did nothing wrong. You are responsible for your relationship, not your partner's choice to cheat on you.

Being cheated upon breaks you like little else can. It makes you doubt every moment of your relationship, not only with the person who did it but for other's that come in the future. It is not the death of my marriage that got me as much as my loss of faith and trust in men. To be hurt in that way takes a lot out of you. It doesn't help that people expect you to get over it or to be flippant about it. Or that they say it's not a big deal, or that it made it easier for you to leave the man. It is a big deal. And it doesn't make it any easier to walk out on your relationship. It makes you sit on the toilet floor and cry for hours. That's the truth and the sooner you accept it the better.

Yet I have met in the last year, men, who have helped my process of healing to begin. Men who have demonstrated extreme kindness and thoughtfulness. Men who have walked away from temptation. Men who have acknowledged the deep pain infidelity can inflict.

It's a long way off yet but I can see the beginnings of the scab on my wound. I'm still too scared to be in a relationship but I feel like I may be able to trust again. To give freely. To not look over my shoulder at every turn of a relationship. I have learned to raise my standard and have found men who meet the new standard. The scars years of infidelity left on me may never heal completely, yet I hope they won't overshadow my view on love and relationships either.

On what "would have been" my 6th wedding anniversary

The 1st of November kind of creeped up on me this time. The day was going just as planned when suddenly, mid-afternoon, I remembered it was the 1st. The mood steadily went downhill from there. Every few hours I would glance at the clock and think of what I was doing at that time of day six years ago.

While I indulged in my pity fest, going through in excruciating detail my actions and thoughts from that day, my mind started drifting to my other anniversaries. Year 2008, 1st of November my ex-MIL came to our place. And stayed. Not a fun beginning to our married life. The second anniversary was a good one. We went to La Ronde in Montreal and pretended to overlook the deep irreparable fissures that had already permeated our marriage. Roll over to the third, with baby in tow, we fought and stayed home. The fourth was marked by a perfunctory dinner. The tasteless food was an apt reflection of the state of our relationship by then. Most people including my family forgot to wish us. It was our last anniversary.

Last year would have been our fifth anniversary. We'd filed for divorce and were in two separate states. It brought an onslaught of misery and guilt for me. I chose to get drunk and not tell anyone.

This year, it dawned on me that the pain and grief had reduced. On my "would have been" 6th wedding anniversary, I was a single mother to a 3 year old munchkin who means the world to me, I was working, I was spending the day at the parlour purely for myself and not for a man who would barely notice me and I was preparing for my first international holiday on my own steam. Life really wasn't that bad at all. It sure beat getting dressed for a meal with a man who wouldn't bother to bathe or shave. It was a far sight better than the heavy silences and bitter arguments that marked most of our marriage. Or the obligatory sex that neither of us enjoyed anymore.

It made me realize that I may not be married anymore. I may not have an anniversary to celebrate. But I have so much more. I celebrate my son, who is my universe. I celebrate myself and who I have become. I celebrate my life, for it is mine, to love, to make my own decisions, to follow them through and to head off with my friends for the adventure of a lifetime.

Hopefully over the years the pain will vanish altogether. Sometime in the future, the 1st of November may hold no significance at all for me anymore. But till then, whenever the day rolls by, I will remind myself of all the things I gained from letting my marriage go. I will mark this day, from now it is my anniversary with myself. With my freedom. With happiness.