Half baked Souls!

I have spent a long time with friends, family & strangers looking for that smile that would help complete mine. I have been scanning my world with small keen eyes to lock them with someone whose as lost as I am. As a child like all others I had my share of fairy tale stories. All of them told me there would be a prince charming, a Mr. perfect but years passed and none came along. I had almost lost hope, having not met one and not having being even asked by one but then you happened. As you say I was drunk but for me, I was sailing away in the mirth that you had surrounded me in. And I wanted to drown in it.

Today, as this mature (only in numbers & years) individual I know that the society is too vicious and the men too corrupt to believe and to bank on. Yet there are these imperfect someones who make everything come alive for you. Even when they say,"we should take a step back" you are happy rather than being sad. You cry but those are the cliche tears of happiness. The happiness is for the simple reason that even if its a half baked pancake, the good half fills up the empty hunches in your life. And all your previous attempts at that pancake left you in a smoky haze. There is no perfectness that you shall ever cross in your life. It is the imperfections that you should treasure in life. How easy it is to feign righteousness, morality, honesty, sincerity,etc. etc. All this is an endless list of sweet hollow that only echo. But find a man who has the audacity to tell you that he is nothing but mistakes and blemishes. Keep him and keep him close. He will reach you sooner than the others. He will understand your ill founded anger and rash behavior for he has one. He will understand your lameness for he has some. He will understand your unreasonable desires and preposterous dreams for he has many.  He will understand your smile for it is his other half.

When he holds you, you shiver till your deepest core. You have him even if you don't have him. He makes you realize that even if he isn't by your side every night and day you still have his smile, his tears, his fears, his warmth and him. So cheers to the half baked souls! 

Stories to tell

The wind in my ears tells me a story. The clamouring temple bells tell me a story. The vacant spaces tell me a story. The sniffles tell me a story. The lady with wrinkled skin and frowny brows tells me a story. You tell me a story.
Now I have to choose to hear their stories. Stories of valour, of grief, of happiness, of treachery, of cheating, of success, of passion. 
Each one has a tale but no takers.

Fear

I was running at a very fast pace and was breathing heavily. I was trying with all the vigor and energy in me to outrun the monster behind me. I crossed a pier glass and saw there was no one behind. I stopped, i had run out of breath. Bham! the dream had been broken. But then it struck like a lighting bolt. It was within me. I had to face it to fight it.

My monster is fear. everyone has their own monster. One that they try ignoring, belittling and falsifying unless there is no one but them and it. There is no other option but to fasten all courage belts and face it head on. 

I am in a strange new land. I am an outsider in the reflections of their eyes. An outsider who looks different and speaks in a different language. I am not sure what i fear more here, the men or the monsters. Strength is all i need and hope is all i have. 

Of Retrograde

When the clock struck 12 on the night of 31st December 1999, everyone hailed  our entrance into the 21st century as our opening arms to modernism. We as a country saw in it as the time when our time would come and we would be recognized and taken note of. Today we are taken note of; but as the country with a rape capital. When Amanat was raped by a bunch of hooligans in that bus it was not Amanat that was raped alone, it was us as a country being raped. Today we stand stripped and naked in front of the world.

What are we? A country that boisterously claims of culture deep in its roots and a history that was host to the greatest rulers the world has ever seen? A country that has been progenitor of the greatest intellectual minds the world has seen?  A country that is the biggest democracy in the world? Or let me make it simple: A country that is incapable of giving its girls/ women a basic sense of security. A country where I don't know if the auto ride i take will make me reach my home or find me mutilated in the end. A country where if the man i respectfully call uncle will choose to one day try to soil me. A country where I trust no man beyond my father/brother/husband. And even there there are spaces where I run the risk of being abused and beaten.

We have chosen leaders who have attributed this increased spate of violent and shameful incidents against women to factors as western culture of clothing, dance, food and mobile phones. And of course there are the ones who would always question the way we dress and the way we interact with men. I am wondering if the way we breathe is "socially acceptable" or not. Being the greatly spiritual country, so we have the so-called spiritualists telling us that as a woman Amanat should have pleaded mercy and made one of the rapists his brother. That would have solved the problem for her. Wow! Am wondering how happier we would have been had his mother had the sensibility to tie his father a rakhi. Why should I plead? Only because I have breasts and you have balls( that are incidentally peanut sized ).

How do we even feign to call ourselves modern? We are far far away from it. We need to respect our women. We need to awaken as a nation and take note of the situation. I am not sure how I can or we can bring this change but we need to start to make an attempt in the least. We need to move and snatch our rights back. We need to awaken our brothers and lovers alike. We need to change our system to give the offenders stricter punishment. Someone has rightly said that unless one fears the outcome of one's actions one does it without fear or shame. We need to place moral and legal sanctions as a society to set a precedent for the rapists.

We owe it to no one else but to ourselves. We need to give our daughters the basic right they are born with; the right to a free, uninhibited life in this country. What use is our intellectualism as a nation if I cannot give my daughter a safe home, a safe neighborhood, a safe city, a safe country, a safe society?