Wednesday, April 25, 2012

The Journey for a Sister

I barely managed to grab the plane home. Home, the phrase sounded unsure in my mouth, as I turned it over on my tongue. I was basically running back to see my mom. Home was incidental.

I was born with wheels. My parents kept on moving around with their jobs. I saw quite a few homes, but never home. The only family I knew was my parents and my sister. There were uncles, aunts, cousins whom I met annually; they were festival persons, never family. 

But this time, Mom has returned to our home town, settled in the house we have built, a building I can dubiously call home. My uncle and aunt stays close by with their two children. I have been hearing how my uncle and aunt, and especially the daughter made sure my mom felt at home in home. Practically, she made home home for mom.

So, I was going home. But I knew I was going to my mom. I'll meet everyone. 

(Aside, even though I have never felt home, I have always been, ever since I was a kid, looking for the one person I can accept as my sister, my younger sister, the younger one I can take care of.)

I reached home a day earlier than I told mom, just to surprise her. I was spending couple of lazy days as the previous week was 12 hours-a-day and I was bone tired.

Every day I would be meeting my uncle, aunt and almost always the girl cousin. Every moment she was preparing something for me to eat, getting me something. She, a practicing lawyer, taking as much time out as is possible. I had never seen so much care from a younger one. To be honest, never have I been close to her. But this level of caring. Still, I am a hardened outsider, never easily felt anything.

One night, Mom & Me were invited over to my uncle's home for dinner. Just across the road from our home, we walked over. 

Being the family, we just sat down in the cooking area, chit chatting with aunt and my cousin. 

Just to stretch my legs, I got up and walked around a bit. Then is when I heard my cousin's shout. 
What happened to you?

I had a vague feeling that one of my foot was feeling sticky. But then I put it down to the rain. When I looked down on my foot, it was on the bloody red side. But as is my norm, I tried to shrug it off, when I got a stern look and a soft plea from her to sit down and let her have a look at my wound.

I had to bow before her wish. I had to put up my bloody foot on a stool. She got on her knees, trying to gauge my wound. But the blood flowing as well as that which has already dried, made it hard to point the wound. She hurriedly got some Dettol soaked cotton. I extended my hand to grab the cotton to clean off my foot. But she shook her head. 

She bent on her knees and gently started to clean off the blood from my foot. I felt bit embarrassed. I have never had anyone attend my wounds in a long, long time. And with my multitude of wounds, it was a high hope.

I noticed how much caring there was in every time she cleaned off my foot. My blood had never been in short supply. It kept on flowing. She gently kept on cleaning it. Finally my blood gave out before her persistence. 

For those who no longer remember, Dettol still burns like hell. I flinched once or twice. Then I just noticed the warmth of a sister's care. It no longer burnt.

She hurriedly applied some ointment on my wound. I am not sure it burnt or not.

She kept on inquiring whether my leg is alright, whether I can walk or not. I did actually limped a bit while walking down my dinner. She walked just at my right hand, in case I need any support.

After dinner, she actually walked along with me and mom to make sure I reached home without any further bloodshed.


This uninhibited care, the loudness & the softness of caring, never seen ever. 


I realized that this is the younger sister I was looking for. The one who cares so unconsciously, so completely. The one I can call my sister and care for and never again feel the sense of loss I have carried within me always. The same sense of loss which turns me careless at most moments in my life. From now on, I will always be thinking of this caring young sister and be a bit more careful.


I am a thick headed person. So, it took me so long to recognize the younger sister I have always looked for everywhere.


This was my pilgrimage, the one journey where I found the one being, one invaluable being I have seek like forever. I realized the truth of family and found my younger sister.


By the by, her pet name literally translates into younger sister.


This entry is a part of the contest at BlogAdda.com in association with imlee.com

The contest came before me may be a day after this revelation for me. And I decided to break my rule of distancing an experience before writing about it. This is one journey I had to shout about from my roof top. The My Family Memory Contest was even better. I am writing this out of that pure sense of awe I felt when I found my dear young sister I had been blind for in so many years. To you, sister.

Friday, April 6, 2012

Love & Other Things

"And my conclusion was this: that as you go on living with someone, you slowly lose the power to make them happy, while your capacity to hurt them remains undiminished. And vice versa, of course." Mme Wyatt

How true it is ! Wait a minute. How true it is? Or, is it true? 

Is it just another way of saying familiarity breeds contempt? May be I am making it very simplistic. Simple is something that Talking It Over is not.

Though I picked the book looking for a light read after finishing Barbarians at the Gate. That is a different book, different post. But suffice to say that though a real engaging read, it is not an open-read-shut-over kind of book. You keep on mulling over it for sometime to come. So, right after finishing reading the book, and still reeling under the facts in it and trying to judge it maybe, I looked for something light to engage my eyes. And though much abused a genre, love stories still deliver on this, if you choose carefully enough. 

Julian Barnes managed to disabuse this illusion with the very first chapter of his book. Using multiple point of views to narrate the same incidents is not an unique style. But in a love story, it was the first time I was reading it. 

And more than a style device, the real intriguing part was how differently the three protagonists of the book view the same incident. How three people so closely linked can have so varied stances on each aspect of life! It does not really boggle the mind. We know that each person is unique. But when you read the first chapter, it certainly strikes you between the eyes. 

Strike the word read out. You are not reading the novel. The three persons are talking to you. And occasionally few other persons too. 

Listening to them talk, you jolt with a bewilderment on their having any kind of relationship. But there it is. Our two male protagonists Stuart and Oliver are friends from school. The solo female protagonist, Gillian is the wife of one and the ex-wife of the other, though you will come to know that later. 

I am not providing a summary here. But just few thoughts that popped up in my mind/heart while reading the book. Just to make the context, I will be using couple of quotations from the book.

Ok, spoiler alert. Oliver falls in love with Gillian on the day of her wedding to Stuart, though he knew her for sometime before that, but only as Stuart's girlfriend. Oliver, a philanderer, not a good character starts seeing his salvation in her face. 

"You know that story of the man who wakes up and finds he's turned into a beetle? I was the beetle who woke up and saw the possibility of being a man." Oliver

But why would Gillian love him? How would Stuart see this love? As a betrayal or inevitable?

Reading till now, you may have puzzled out that Oliver does become Gillian's second husband. But how? Or why Gillian makes this choice? Can we logicalize her choice? Can love be logically argued out?

But what about Stuart? How does he take it? Does he breaks down? No, he becomes all the more successful materially. How or Why? No logical answers. Only because he had nothing else to do? But would he be whole again? Would he love again?

"Love is only what people agree exists, what they agree to put a notional value on. Nowadays it's prized as a commodity by almost everyone. Only not by me. If you ask me, I think love is trading artificially high. One of these days the bottom is going to fall out of love." Stuart

Is this how he truly feels? Isn't anger & sadness just another expression of the love that have made him alive in all ways and which he have lost? And does he get over it?

"It's not over till it stops hurting. There's a long way to go." - Stuart

After sometime when Stuart visits the small French village where Oliver and Gillian has relocated after marriage, was he there seeking revenge? Or just looking for some sort of closure? It can't be revenge because never did he attempted anything. He just waited in the hotel and watched their daily happiness. Was he there just to make sure she is happy? Is that love? Or was it the sight of her baby that undoes all his revenge plans?
And the longing of his heart for that future which could have been his. Was it destined? Is that how love works?
But then does love really ends? If Gillian loves Oliver and has got over Stuart, why does she enact that play of domestic violence ending with a cut on her face, before Stuart's eyes? Why does she not hesitate to gamble away Oliver's respectable presence in the village, by making him out as a domestic violence type. What was she looking for? What she wanted to show Stuart and why? Maybe she desired to show Stuart that life is not all perfect for her too. Maybe she was trying to mitigate his hurt. But why? Was it simple pity? Or a deeper care? Or was it some form of love that withstood everything that happened? Or else why would she throw away her well settled domestic life to put up a show? But what sort of love is this?

Mid way in the novel, the three character asserts:
Whatever happens ... whatever happens, I'm the one that's going to get hurt.
I'm the one in the middle, the one that's being squeezed every day. I'm the one that's going to get hurt.
Bash, bash, bash. I'm the one who's going to get hurt.

Maybe love is not about oneself. Maybe it is more about the person whom we love.
Maybe that's why Gillian did what she did. Maybe she owed him this.

Maybe love never dies out totally. It remains in motley forms. It remains.

Mme Wyatt got it wrong, I believe. Because living with someone for years, a person won't just lose the power to make the other person happy, he will also gain the insights on how to hurt the person devastatingly. If even after so much power, things don't turn so dark, it is because of the love that remains. And in times, it will rise to the surface. Such as in Gillian's act. Stuart's hesitation against any revenge.

Was it a happy ending story? No
Was it a sad story? No
It is just a novel that shows the ambiguities of love. And how our lives shape up based on this one emotion and its entanglements.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

To Climb the Mountain

To climb a mountain requires special skills in using ropes, harnesses, crampons, hammers, hooks etc. 
One has to acquire these skills through a regime of constant training. One also requires physical training to build stamina, flexibility, balance etc. These are the easiest parts.

The hardest part is learning to climb over the mountains of fear, lack of faith and trust that exist inside our minds and hearts. The constant doubt which goes on telling us that this mountain is not for us to climb, it is too high, too slippery, too unconquerable. Learning to overcome these treacherous hills of doubts which curbs our climb is the most important, most vital aspect of a mountaineering expedition.

It is indispensable to become a successful mountain climber.
It is the same with most other things in life.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Words, Beings & Relationships

The more close to a person we feel...the more we care for someone...the more we think of someone as our own...the more dear someone becomes...when someone becomes really our own and knows it for a fact, we have to become all the more careful in our conduct, our choice of words, and how we use those words.


There's too much of understanding. But at the same time, there is too much of emotional openness, emotional tenderness, and emotional vulnerability here.


Even a pin-prick goes like a stab right at the nerve joints.


We can be wounded vitally, in the cardinal areas, only by those whom we love.


And we always feel secure knowing that they too know that truth; and care for us enough, love us so much as to not do that murderous act or hurt us anywhere else either.


Something that pass off as a momentary lapse in others, really takes the appearance of a betrayal in the action of a dear one. 


It is not the act really. 


But what comes to be expected of us, because of our implicit promise of understanding in that closeness, the tender fibers of the bond of caring, everything that is right & good in that relationship. 
Each of our action, till that moment, has built up a bubble of expectation. Even a pin of a small slip bursts it. And the whole foundation shakes to the core. But the worse thing is to face the pain in the eyes of the dear one. It is all the more painful for you.


Got to learn this lesson, in one of life's little stabbing tragedies. 


Though the initial act was just a momentary overlooking of vocabulary. But it got me a vital communication.

They Don't Fit in the Pocket

I must have been in Class 7 when I read my first Hindi pulp fiction. It was a novel named  Sile Huye Honth  (Sewn Lips). The hero of the...