Thoughts on Being Diagnosed with Depression

i. I don’t know whether I’m crying because of depression, or because I’ve been told that I’m suffering from depression.

ii. I’m told I’ll come out of this, stronger than ever. I doubt if I’ll ever make it to the other side. I doubt if I want to even reach the other side anymore.

iii. Maybe Mom was right. Maybe it’s all in my head. But then, isn’t everything?

iv. There was a time when I had a problem with it, but I no longer mind cigarettes feeding on every ounce of oxygen left in my lungs.

v. I don’t feel hungry. I just eat. I don’t feel sleepy. I just sleep.
The only thing I feel is the wind touching my face. One gust after another. Like every lover that came and left. I try to hold on to them. I fail.

vi. Being alone isn’t an option because over-thinking fucks my head. Being around people isn’t an option either, because they might say something that will fuck with my head. All I can do is do is go by my routine, and pray that anxiety doesn’t come unannounced and rip the ground beneath my feet.

vii. Maybe I should post a funny Facebook status. My existence wouldn’t seem so worthless if I can make other people smile.

viii. I spent most of my life learning to keep my guard up, making sure that my armour had the kind of iron nothing could penetrate. Till I got crushed under its own weight. Now I just walk around exposed; my festered wounds try to befriend the dust in the air and the salt on my skin.

ix. Death makes more sense than life right now, but suicide is for cowards. But why is suicide considered cowardly? Those victims actually made a decision and stuck by it. Most of us live our days wanting to run away from life, and spend our nights making unsuccessful attempts to do so because we’re so afraid. Isn’t that the real cowardice?

x. The real enemies of mental illness patients are not just the ones who don’t understand the concept at all, but also those who ‘think’ they understand it, but actually don’t. Most of us belong to the second category, and that is really dangerous.

xi. To the people who say they’re always available if someone needs to talk, DON’T BE AVAILABLE. Speaking from experience, ABSOLUTELY NONE OF YOU KNOW HOW TO HANDLE A MENTALLY ILL PERSON. God forbid if you say something that fucks them up even more (Example – don’t be depressed yaar/ come on, buck up/ why are you so sad all the time/ it’s all in your head/ no one can make you feel something unless you want to feel that way), would you take responsibility for their condition? If you really want to help, try finding a good shrink in your area, save their number and refer them to people who need help.

xii. People need to stop diagnosing themselves. Sadness is not depression, bad concentration is not ADHD, and social awkwardness isn’t the same as social anxiety.

xiii. My friends need to stop saying ‘take care’ at the end of conversations. I wouldn’t reach out for help if I could ‘take care’.

xiv. My shrink tells me to dream of days when things wouldn’t be so bad, and live to see them. Hope is important.

xv. I think of what I want my life to be like. Being the competitive and insecure idiot that I am, I think I want to have a long list of achievements before I die.

Having woken up this morning will be one of them.

PS : To know what exactly your depressed friend needs, click here.

Let’s talk about violation.

Let’s talk about violation.

Let’s talk about how

Nascent breasts, curves of motherhood

Are taught to

Not jiggle

Not move

Not be groped

Not be touched

Not be too big

Not be too small

As if

Their existence is a burden

Even before it’s real

Behind closed doors

And on celluloid

are the only places

Where it’s not

Let’s talk about the times when

All your stories about

Being groped

Being touched

Being catcalled

Being stalked

Are met with different versions of
“You should be thankful, it could have been so much worse”
and how

“You should have known better”

Of all the times

When you went through it all

In your head

Again and again

Minute by minute

Second by second

Only to find ‘that one thing’

You should have avoided

That one route you shouldn’t have taken

That one dress you shouldn’t have worn

That one drink you shouldn’t have had

‘Maybe I should have taken the cab and not the auto’

‘Why, are those safe?’

‘Not really. But at least you will have a company to hold accountable for it.’

‘Maybe I should have sat in the ladies compartment that day.’

‘Oh is that safe?’

‘Yeah, at least till the time you’re inside the metro’

You went through it all

in your head

Again and again

And relived

every mistake you think you made

And now you’re reduced to

A few body parts

That live with the stains of his fingerprints.

Let’s talk about how

equality between men and women

Will always have arguments of

Reserved seats in the bus

But no mentions of

All the times

You got squished in a crowd

And were felt up

“accidentally”

Let’s talk about the times

When shrinking into a corner

Felt easier

And open playgrounds

With no corners to curl up into

Reminded you of the last time you felt

Exposed

Stripped

And mind you,

He didn’t even have to touch you

To make you feel that way.

Let’s talk about ‘moving on’

How your loved ones will tell you that

‘They understand your pain’

And

‘Make sure it doesn’t happen again’

In the same fucking breath

While you look at them; blank,

Broken, yet stuck

Like a shattered fibre glass

Some will call you a victim

And the others will call you a survivor

You wonder which name works better

You wonder if even matters

You walk away like nothing happened

And let your back face the past

Hoping that it’s no longer staring at your butt

The farther you walk

The better you know that

 being strong only happens till

That one smell

That one sound

That one colour

Brings you back to square one

And if there’s anything you can be sure of,

It is that

Of all the jokes life will play on you,

‘Letting go’ is worst one.

There’s Entropy in my Head.

It starts when you try to build homes where hearts don’t exist.

“You’re funny. Stop being so sad.”
“Why can’t you just be happy in life?”
“Why can you not be normal?”

I was probably never a sad person. I was just always extreme. I would sometimes paint sparkles out of laughter and the other times I would shatter at the sight of even the smallest drop of grief that entered my heart. I was never happy; I was ecstatic. I was never sad; I just drowned.

What else do you do when you realise that yours is one of those unfortunate existences that will never get used to the notion of change; when you realise that after every wave that brings you pearls, there comes one that takes them all away? What do you do when every word that was supposed to be a needle pierces your heart like a knife? What do you do when every hand that want to hold comes with a preconceived need to fix you, and leaves behind a weight, a burden of its own dream to be ‘happy’?
How do you wake up in the morning when you know days are not your brand of beer, while the nights blend your dreams with silence like soda with whisky, and the starlight purges you of everything you carried within the night before?

What do you do when time and people turn your existence into an apology letter for all the times your eyes became the sea- the sea that stays, sometimes as cancer, sometimes as a lump in your throat?

How do you live with a heart that opens up only in garbage spaces defined by the stench of smoke?

 

“You build a wall around yourself.
Because you cannot be a pussy.
Not even if you have one.”

 

 

You learn to laugh. To smile. Sometimes it is real, sometimes it’s fake. Doesn’t matter as long as it LOOKS real. You do it till what started off as pretence becomes a part of you, like the lump in your throat. You try to change, but you don’t really do. You just put on some makeup and hide that pimple. Simple as that.

For all the times you wish to puke out the lump, you spill it all in ink. You jump from being extremely vulnerable to extremely funny so that your own laughter immerses the chaos in your head. You write. You do all of this. You build forts and moats of something you’re not, and inside those keep a dark corner that feels like home. Somewhere midst of it all, you wonder why it takes so much struggle merely ‘exist’ in a world that sings stories inspiring people to ‘be themselves’. (On a completely different note, ‘be yourself’ is a hoax. Don’t fall for it.)

You didn’t need fixing.
You needed ‘existing’.
It was all you ever needed.

Instead, you jump from one eccentricity to another, hoping to someday land on what is ‘normal’. That, is how the entropy is born.

You smoke a little. Okay, maybe not a little. You smoke till the world around you shrinks with every passing wisp. You exhale till there’s nothing left inside. You try to take in the world one step at a time, but you were always an ‘all or nothing’ kinda person, so you just go ahead and gobble it up. You let its ashes live inside you and on days when it overflows, you dip a bit of laughter into it and paint a joke or two. Let out a laugh or two. This is probably the only thing that would stop you from crumbling- Not that crumbling is a problem, it’s just that life is finite and cannot afford to be just a recurring episode of demolition and reconstruction. There’s a lot more to life. Like money. Like ambition.

Life is too short to be lived as a fragment that tumbles under every wave that comes its way, to live as myself.
In death, I shall try again.

I am the sky.

//I am the sky//

In a world that tried to define my existence between closed thighs and pursed lips, I learned to open up. I learned to do that because even though congested  corners hold me better than open playgrounds ever will, opening up taught me how to breathe. It taught me how to drink away the smoke that is blown at me, like it never existed.

I am the empty spaces between the fingers of open palms that beg Gods for rain- the ones that seldom know that the fate of their famished soul is not decided by imaginary men sitting up here, but by the lines that exist on their own bodies, and the amount of sweat they’re drenched in.

They look at me as if I drive everything. I don’t. I just like to watch.

Maybe because the Earth has no place for deserted echoes that quarrel till they die, for it is too busy worshipping the marvelous melodies and the sparkling silence. Maybe that is why I become their haven for all the times chaos struck them in the gut; so I give them a home. I open my heart to them, and when it rains, I watch it enliven the seeds of the love they had once sowed. I sit back and watch as the seeds either grow stagnant or drown in it. Inevitably, I watch people make space in their hearts for the rain to walk in, pristine and barefoot.

On days when the stars sparkle too much, I twist the night and let all the stars fall into my cape. The days were meant to be bright. The nights were meant to be dark. Simple as that.

The farther I spread my legs, the more I realised how constant the universe with in me was, how fucking invincible I was. How it never mattered whether clouds hid me, or the sun burnt me during the day, because night would always gobble it up- that the night, with all its darkness and twinkle and sparkle, could never really stay either, because I would never let it.

I could never fly; but on days when no one begs me for rain, I choose to become a home to birds so they can fly into the mirage I made for them.

I’m the sky.
I’m the constant.
I’m way above everything.

Of Incomplete yet Complete stories-1

“It’s been six months since we met, and I can still kiss you in places you didn’t even know existed on your skin.”

“Exactly. It has been six months since my skin melted at your touch; the touch that climbed all over it like poison ivy once you left.”

“You know how time separates people so that love grows stronger?”

“If strengthening our bond means holding a vacuum in my stomach; if strengthening our bond is about lonely nights scraping off whatever is left of my eyes for salt and pain; if strengthening our bond means living with autumn in my soul – I’m pretty sure I can do without it.”

“Try to not make the same mistake as I did.
Don’t be the unechoed murmur under someone’s breath. Don’t be the unexhaled tar in someone’s lungs. Don’t be the unspoken word on the underside of someone’s tongue. Don’t be the smudged ink in a half-filled notebook. Don’t be the tear that dries and dies at the corner of an eye, and if you do end up being any of those things, be careful to not be sliced apart by blades of time.

Because you know what happens to the dead roses hidden inside unsent letters?
They end up in the bin.”

 

 

 

 

7 Reasons Rio Olympics Turned out to be a Ray of Hope for Indian Sports

Rio Olympics. The two words are enough to stir up the patriotism we’ve been feeling lately. Everything thing said and done, Indian sports has improved for the better. India sent its largest ever contingent to the Olympics and managed to win quite a few accolades. I am really very happy with the way this event turned things for us (Even though I always hated the PT period myself).

1. People actually stood against Shobhaa De’s infamous comment instead of agreeing with it.
   Let’s face it, we Indians never cared about who won what at the Olympics or in any other sport except cricket, but once she commented on how our players were just lazy heads who had gone there to get selfies clicked, more and more people came out in the support of our sports persons. Given that she has received enough flak for her statement, I think we should see the silver lining. Her thought became the negative force that made the rest of us unite.
2. People actually called out the blatant sexism that exists in the arena of sports journalism.
   Sexist bias towards male sportspersons has existed for as long as one can remember. In fact, it has been there for so long that we’re immune to it. However, a huge load of such instances were called out and bashed this time, not just by news websites, but by Indian people too.
3. Our politicians and managers of the participants  got called out for being lousy at their jobs.
   Instead of shaming our talent for not being good enough, we managed to identify the fault that existed in the middlemen. Twitter (read Tanmay Bhat) trolled the sports minister, Vijay Goel for calling out the names of the participants wrong, along with the ministers who themselves flew to the destination instead of prioritising  their client (Have they not been fired yet?)
   
4. People came forward and supported the female sportspersons with as much fervor as they’d support the males.
   Again, how many of us knew a female sportsperson other than Saina Nehwal? I sure as hell didn’t. I didn’t know PV Sindhu till I saw her smash Okuhara’s chance of winning the semi-final and then I couldn’t wait to see her play the finals. More than anything, it was the first time I saw all my male colleagues waiting for 7 in the evening to tune in and watch a ‘badminton’ match, and whining when the power got cut.
5. The definition of the word ‘Ladylike’ was thrashed to pieces.
   I remember the first time my mother saw Sakshi Malik’s match, her exact words were “I couldn’t imagine girls could do something this un-ladylike”. One cannot imagine the kind of happiness I felt at that moment. As someone who couldn’t even explain to her mother the purpose of posting a picture of her hairy leg, I was more than ecstatic to see her notion of the word ‘womanly’ being shattered this way.
6. More than anything else, Rio Olympics revealed a side of ours that knows sportsmanship.
   I remember the time when people threw black paint at a cricketer’s house when India lost a match to Pakistan while these Olympics, we cheered for Saina and Dipa, even when they didn’t win anything. These Olympics made me realise that we have become more sporting and empathetic towards the efforts these participants put in than before.
7. Someone posted this on Facebook and I couldn’t be happier. Enough said.

When A Man Tells Me I’m Beautiful

When a man tells me
I’m beautiful
I don’t believe him.
Instead, I relive my days in high school
When no matter how good I was
I was always the girl with a moustache

He doesn’t know what it’s like
to grow up in your maternal family
Where your body is the only one that
Proudly boasts of your father’s X
While your mother’s X sits back and pities
It’s unladylike-ness

He doesn’t know the teenager
Who filled her corners with
Empty consolations of
Being loved for who she was- someday.

He doesn’t know hypocrisy.

He doesn’t know of the world that
tells you to ‘be yourself’
and sells you a fair and lovely shade card
in the same fucking breath

He doesn’t know of the hot wax and the laser
whose only purpose is to
replace your innocent skin
with its own brand of womanhood

He doesn’t know of the veet and the bleach
That uproot your robust hair
in the name of hygiene
Hygiene, which when followed by men
makes them gay and unmanly

He doesn’t know how bushy eyebrows are tamed
and how uni brows die a silent death
All to preserve beauty
And of the torturous miracles that happen
Inside the doors marked
WOMEN ONLY

So when a man calls me beautiful
I throw at him, a smile; a smile that remained
After everything the strip pulled away
And I dare him
To wait
Till my hair grows back.

Loneliness.

I think all my ideas about love take birth from my ideas of loneliness. The more I get delve into my loneliness, the more I realise what love must feel like.
Loneliness is an assurance in your head that no tear you wipe or no hand you hold will ever be reciprocated to you.
Loneliness is realising that loving someone is very different from trusting their love for you, in which case you’ll have to put your entire existence on your sleeve for them to take care of in their own way. More than often you’ll realise than you do not have the strength to do that.

Loneliness is when you constantly picture your last days on earth smoking joints in a rocking chair with no one around because your pieces were too shattered to be put together by anybody.

Loneliness is when you learn to smile at everything you see because there’s nothing else you can fake this well.

Loneliness is when you build a wall around yourself- an impermeable wall of your desperation for love and care.
Loneliness when autumn seems more real than spring.

Loneliness is the pillar you hold on to when none of others are left, and after a while it becomes the only pillar you want to hold on to because none of others seem so durable.
More than anything, loneliness is being immune to the sinking because that is what you’ve always done, except that gravity does not define the end of this abyss. Pain does.

An Introduction.

 

“Your project is not good. What have you decided to do after engineering?”

“Sir, I want to write.”

“Hmm. Rest is fine, but it’s not going to pay you very well.”

“Maybe, Sir. I’ll see to that. Moreover, I passion means something, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, there are a lot of people like you. But nothing really happens.”

-Conversation during my major project viva

 

It has almost been a year since I decided to drop engineering and take to writing. My relationship with engineering was pretty much an unrequited love that I later got fed up of. It has been a year since then and while it hasn’t been an easy road, I don’t regret making the choice I made.

However, the road till here has been full of hurdles. I have had more personal roadblocks to face than professional. I have faced depression and social anxiety and realized that writer’s blocks are more common than common cold. I have faced more failure in this one year than I did in four years of engineering, but I have also managed to learn as much. I have found an ocean within me, brimming with thoughts, hopes and dreams. I have realized that the biggest fight I am going to face is to toe the line with this society without letting it destroy my sanity.

The reason I switched to writing was because it gave me a home; a shelter for the times I felt too weak to face the world, a haven for the times it all became too much. With time, my notebook became my canvas on which I could write about anything and everything. Writing introduced me to freedom. It accepted me as I was. I had, since forever, been afraid of the fact that I felt things too deeply. I would tell myself to swallow what I couldn’t chew, till it clotted my veins and reduced my existence to collection of knots. Writing taught me that it was okay to feel, that it was okay to cry, especially if I could spill my tears on the canvas and turn them into pearls of poetry. That it was okay to for once, breathe, spread my arms and fall in love without worrying about the pain of the heartbreak. That it was okay to question and re-evaluate what my parents had taught me. But most of all, it taught me that everything would be fine if only I believed in myself.

It has almost been a year, and though I have not come very far, the journey has been worth it.