I think of January 9th everyday. It’s so crazy to think if I hadn’t worked where I work, if I hadn’t taken a cab because I can, if I hadn’t tried to not be on a call every morning, if the universe hadn’t connected a thousand dots together just so we would find each other…

I am two opposite people in one. I am traditional and I am liberal. My eyes search for the brightest of pink borders in that perfect Kanchipuram silk the way my hands are drawn to the little black dress that hugs the right places. I feel peace at a temple, sitting in front of God the way I find calm at the end of a chaotic day with a glass of wine in a loud Blues bar. I am the perfect conservative girl your parents always wanted. I am loud opinions and adamance like someone they can never tolerate.

I was raised with words of “change now” because who would marry the woman that didn’t want to be a wife? That wanted a husband who will run the house and have a career so she can claim she was tired after a long day? That wanted to wear the pants but wanted her spouse to be the man?

“How will you find a world of contradictions in one person just because you are? How will he be traditional and open? How will he accept you for all that you are while still being acceptable to your parents?

How will you trust him? You trust no one. How will he trust you? Your best friends are two men.”

It was the extra drink at a work party. The stumble home from Don’t Tell Mama. The desire to make my own money. To be richer than everyone we’ve ever known. To be married to my job. The flinch that was a reflex at the idea of becoming ‘someone’s wife’. The refusal to commit to “womanly duties”.

I was never going to find you because I was unsuitable for a man that didn’t exist.

Then you happened.

I think back to every day that we’ve spent together. Life put us through a lifetime in a year. To love, to lose, to feel helpless, feel lost, depressed and claustrophobic. To deal with anxiety attacks and temper tantrums. Physical and emotion pain. All in the middle of a pandemic.

Yet here we are. This morning I watched an episode of Schitt’s Creek. Patrick serenaded David. I hung on to every word.

“Give me a life time of promises and a world of dreams

Speak the language of love like you know what it means.”

I could see it. The stars and sparkle that enveloped us. It wasn’t my imagination. When I stand next to you, I feel it wrap around us, pulling us closer to each other. It feels like the words I told my best friend after our first date.

“It’s magic.”

Today, we finished something we started many months ago. Today, I married my best friend. My soulmate. The love of my life.

Today, I married you.

And the girl who swore she’d never be tied to a man, stands next to you, excited for the rest of our life.

It’s been a week since she passed. A week where I woke up every morning, brushed, showered, got my morning coffee, checked my emails and got to work. At 11, I’d break to make lunch that I ate to different series on Netflix. I got a second coffee at 4 and dinner at 8.

My life went on.

It’s almost like it’s all normal. Like I’m just this kid in a foreign country, working my butt off in the middle of a pandemic and my family is intact where I last saw them but that’s not the truth. Not even fucking close and that reality is scaring me.

I don’t know what it is about it all. Is it that when I go to Chennai the next time, I won’t have to ask, “When do we go see her?”

Is it that I will never have another moment where she holds my face and kisses my cheek again?

Is it that I last saw her in a hospital bed, mildly hallucinating? Having to deal with the fact that I didn’t get to hold her hand and say, “Thank you for the best parts of my childhood. I have loved every minute of being your granddaughter.”

Is it that I will never talk about her in the present tense again?

Or the mere fact that my grandmother – the woman that held my hand on our way to markets as a toddler, bought me puzzles and games that made me smarter and faster, believed in me as if there was absolutely nobody on this planet that could be any better – is now dead and I wasn’t there?

Instead, as she breathed her last, I was texting friends, smiling and excited about a new step in my life. I cut my sister’s call when she tried to tell me because I was too busy staring at a dog. I found out via text.

I took a deep breath and called my mom. “Okay. Okay. Keep me posted.” It hadn’t passed through me. I was surrounded by flatmates, it couldn’t pass through me. I walked into my room and the door shut. I can’t remember the last time I felt as broken and helpless as I did in that moment. I couldn’t tell anyone because I have a problem letting people see me that weak. So, when my dad called to check on me, I wiped my tears and put on a smile. “I’m fine. Are you okay? Okay. Yeah, I”ll go to bed now.” That was 9pm.

I watched the clock turn to 3.10 in the morning. I woke up at 5. That was last Friday.

Here I am in this new world. Locked indoors, just a girl and her computer. I have no grandparents. I’ll be bold enough to say I was my grandmother’s favourite. Maybe not, but I’ll keep what I believe and the world will let me.

She was a bold woman. She spoke English so poignantly, it surprised people. She was independent for as long as she was able and it killed her when she couldn’t be anymore. You don’t know her. You don’t know how much she loved and cared. How she stood up for me when nobody else would. How she saw a side of me that often I didn’t even see.

She was wise and poised. She was traditional without being conservative. Words can’t ever explain who she was to me.

I feel her absence. I didn’t talk to her everyday. But the idea that I won’t ever talk to her again gets to me everyday. I won’t see her laugh at my stupid jokes or shake her head at my crazy stories. I won’t see her anymore.

But I know my life will go on. I’ll get used to the new reality. I’ll get used to trips where I don’t visit her. I’ll get used to living with only memories of her. Slowly, she’ll belong more to my past than to my present. More in my head than in person. Until every year, she becomes a day on my calendar. A smile when I cut mangoes for my kids for the first time like she used to. A smell that seems familiar when walking past her favourite products at a grocery store. A joke that only we’ll know. And my life… will go on.

But on a bad day, as I find myself in a corner not feeling all that good, her voice will speak in the back of my head, “You’re a diamond in the rough. They don’t know how to make you shine.”

And so she will remain a part of everything I will ever become. For as long as I live.

I will always be “paattisaami” ❤

You wake up and look in the mirror. Your bed hair isn’t perfect. Your morning breath can use a mint or two. Yesterday’s eyeliner is now almost a smoky eye. Almost.

You wake up and look around you. His side of the bed now cold. He’s been gone a while. What if he doesn’t come back?!

You wake up and see her snuggling in her corner. She doesn’t need your arms around her for a good night’s sleep. She’s alright with herself. What happens when she stops wanting me?

You wake up and feel that pang. There’s no blanket in the world to cover this one up.

Your life feels like an illusion, waiting to be taken away. Only, it was never yours.

Not that hair. Not that face. Not that girl.

It could be. But you’ll never allow it, will you?

That heart of yours will never let you have it all.

And so you sulk. A little pout forever on your lips. Some people are born to be that way. Some lives are meant to be lived that way. But not mine. Not now.

And so you look. From a glass screen as you double tap on a world that isn’t yours.

It’s the laughter. The way they live. The memories you can’t create. The life you’re afraid you won’t live fully.

It’s the heart. The way he stares at her. The love you don’t have. The relationship you may never experience.

It’s this feeling. Is he still here? Is she still in this apartment? When they leave, will they come back? But, why?

It’s the body. The muscles you won’t have. The hair that can’t be styled. The skin that’s filled with flaws.

It’s that moment. What will I ever be? Will my life ever happen?

But when that alarm goes off, you don’t get up.

When it’s time for class, you don’t show up.

When you’re invited to the party, you don’t want to dress up.

Because, “What’s the point?”

You let your wings close and find a book about a girl who took a chance to have it all. You’ll wish you were her. But when the time is here, you won’t do it.

It’s not insecurity. It’s not a complex. You’re not an introvert.

It is a feeling. The one that stops you from waking up.

She can do it, doesn’t mean I can. I am not meant to live like her. I can’t.

Funny thing – she’s like you too. But she stopped letting that feeling control her. She let her life take over her world. It wasn’t magic. It was simply a decision.

One you find so impossible to make.

But you know what? You can make it.

That voice in your head, it’s a lie.

That girl in the book you read? She’s based on a real woman. Like you. Like me.

So stop snoozing that alarm.

Stop sleeping when you have class.

Stop lazing around and pull out that dress you love.

Every life you see from a distance happened because they fought their way through that voice.

You are no different.

So turn down the volume.

Let your heart lead the way.

Sex.

In my world, that’s a taboo word. It doesn’t matter if you’re married or not. You just don’t throw that word around. You whisper softly to ears that will judge. You blush when asked if it hurt that first wedding night. “You’ll be treated like a whore if you say that word aloud,” my parents taught me.

Sex.

I was 16 in a high school half way across the world. My only friend there said, “Oh my God. It was all about sex.” I looked around panicking. “Our Dean is here. Shh..” She stared at me like I had lost my mind. “So what? He’s married. He knows what sex is about.” Yet again, a word I wasn’t allowed to say was spoken for everyone else to hear.

Sex.

It’s the only way to grab a man’s attention I was told. It’s what a man wants from a woman. Dress carefully. Dress decently. Don’t let them see things you should show to only one man. Don’t utter words that aren’t meant for the one you’ll marry. Walk with your head down. Don’t giggle too loud. He’ll hear you. He’ll notice you. He’ll want you. And when he does.. “I can’t explain, darling.”

Sex.

“It’s nothing but an insignificant part of life. Lying naked next to a man is not what matters. It’s disgusting. How can you crave another body? How can you express a need that cannot exist? How can you want something you shouldn’t be talking about?”

Sex.

It’s what he saw in her. In that decently dressed girl who never spoke above a whisper. That girl who hid her beauty behind a mask of silent laughter and tied up hair. It’s what he needed from her until she was nothing but a ball of mess in a corner for anyone to see. Her mother’s words lost in ears that were filled with her own screams.

Sex.

All those lessons die within. When you learn from the world that sex isn’t sin. Because mother, there’s only one definition..

Sex is only sex when we’re both in it together. Everything else is just rape.

So don’t teach me not to utter words that are meant to create. Don’t tell me to hide who I am for a man who has no control of himself. Don’t taunt me when I dare say the words you’ll never approve of. The day you talk to me about it like it’s a mistake, you’ve enabled another man to believe it’s his birthright.

Sex.

It’s not what she had. She was raped. Don’t use her as a lesson. Don’t abuse what she’s been through for me to learn something that’s not true.

Teach me it’s okay to want another person. Tell me it’s okay to love a man, not just emotionally, but also physically. Taunt me when I ask you if I should let him do what he wants even if it’s not what I want.

Sex.

I’ll say it out loud for the world to read. Because it’s not a mistake. It’s not a crime, mother. Don’t let them tell you otherwise.

 

 

 

 

So this is happening :

I’m working on it, I am. But it just feels like something landed on my brain and refuses to move away resulting in a sudden stop of thoughts that make sense when strung together and in my inability to find an alternative string of thoughts after trying for almost a week, I have finally gotten to the point of acceptance about it.

I have writer’s block.

Bear with me please as I get my head back on track. As soon as this big piece of rock sitting on my brain decides to move, I will have a post up, no matter what day of the week it is. Pinky swear !

Thank you for understanding 🙂

Lots of Love.

PS – this picture is also from Pinterest.