Laal Ishq

 Exactly five years ago in the harsh winters of my hometown, a fourteen-year-old Sarthak faced heartbreak for the very first time. It was a heavy feeling, as if I was freefalling down a bottomless pit. The only way out that I could think of was crying a river. So I cried and cried and cried. Presently I am not someone who finds crying a solution to his problems. It’s not something to be proud of. Abstinence from tears isn’t a healthy coping mechanism. So I got inside the heavy razai of year-end and cried until you could see remnants of a fleeting stream on my cheeks. I was not aware of my true feelings but they were so obvious and obnoxious that they hurt me like a toxin that was my own. A toxin that I thought was too abnormal to be accepted for what it was, love. A forbidden love. I remember being all dressed up to have a nice time on Christmas 2016 only to get stood up and have nothing to explain to my mother. This is exactly why I am always skeptical of older friends. They hurt you and don’t even realize that they did. The December of 2016 still haunts me to this day. I get goosebumps thinking about how much I went through as a mere kid. All my self-respect crumbled and tore into pieces it took me all my teenage to gather. 

It was more of a cycle. I let the same set of people hurt me to the core of my existence all over again. 

Since then, year-ends have been strange for me. They have always been chaotic where my disorientation competed with the burning cold. December 2017 had me preparing for my 10th boards. December 2018 had me trying to figure my head out. December 2019 had me all hollow and full of cinematic rock bottom. December 2020 had me posting this snap.

December 2021 has me trying to compress my feelings into this 400-word blog. 

ḳhabar-e-tahayyur-e-ishq (revelation of the wonder of love)

I, for one, absolutely believe that two persons loving each other is a thing as rare as it’s beautiful. It’s very rare and beautiful for two people to get married after having dated each other for 9 long years starting in school. Every relationship seems infinite at its peak. I have known a plethora of relationships that hoped to culminate in marriage crumble under the tough test called high school. I have seen people date for all years of high school only to see each other as just friends in college. It’s a strange thing, something you don’t know whether to feel good or bad about. Bad because you hoped to attend the wedding of two of your closest friends who also happen to be high school sweethearts. Good because maybe we change a lot through and throughout high school and it’s not unusual to feel totally different about your past decisions. But the thing about everything is that life goes on and if you are someone like me who struggles with getting over people and things, past-dweller is how you’d describe yourself. At least, that’s how I describe myself.

Falling head over heels with the wrong people has cost me a lot in my life. It has forced me into some of the most miserable situations of my life. It has stripped me of my sanity and self-esteem. Clearly that ‘rare’ and hence, ethereal event is the story of most residents of this planet. Lata, in Mira Nair’s polarizing adaptation of Vikram Seth’s magnum opus A Suitable Boy quotes Clough’s two kinds of human attraction to describe her dilemma, one that merely excites, unsettles and make you uneasy and the other, the calmer, less frantic one which helps you to grow where you are already growing. I haven’t read Clough but it’s easily something that has stayed with me from that show. I have experienced the former kind over and over again. I feel it’s time we all experience the latter.

Even if two people do fall in something otherworldly and love each other, how often do we see a toxic, unhealthy version of them? Very often do we see people being in relationships with problematic power dynamics. Is it really worth it if it drifts away from the normalcy of your life? Are normal relationships effortless or do they require tonnes of confrontation and fixing?

Of bullies and bullying

Trigger warning: mention of bullying, sexual assault

Growing up as a privileged, sheltered kid in small-town India, my teenage years were pretty easy, so to speak. I went to arguably the best school in my city, which as a matter of fact, is catholic. It was tough adjusting and settling but I did it all and before I knew, I had fit in very well. Just after a year, I became a member of the school parliament through popular support and was anything but a loner. I wouldn’t say I was the coolest kid in my class. In fact, I tried to tag along with “cooler” people for the whole of my 8th and 9th grade. I thought a few of my seniors were much cooler than I was and in order to be as “cool” as them, I traded my self-esteem and individuality for fleeting moments of limelight. It was terrible but I am also glad it happened for it absorbed the rose-tint from my glasses and by 10th grade, I had realized that coolness is subjective and all the people I considered cool were barely cool. What most people and I thought made them cool should have in fact made them problematic but alas, our mutual and universal conditioning! 

If you’ve ever watched a guilty pleasure American teen rom-com, you will be familiar with the concept of bullying which most desi parents would consider “necessary” in order for their kids to become strong and ready for life’s challenges. I wonder how throwing your kid down in a deep ditch is a necessary step to make their bones and body stronger. I wonder how reduced self-confidence makes one ready for the challenges that life throws at them. 

Like every other Indian kid, I was bullied too. I am not the most muscular guy and it has taken me a lot to be this long-haired dude who talks about feminism and woke politics and the absurdity of gender on Instagram and in real life. I would be lying if I said that the bullying that was inflicted upon me didn’t affect me. I was once brutally trolled and bullied for posting a "feminine" picture on Instagram. Apparently, girls thought that it was inferior or demeaning for me to have femininity, something they possessed much more than me. I wonder if it’s internalized misogyny or just the irresistible need to mock and oppress any kind of individuality. It was horrible having to see the same people being advocates against bullying, body-shaming and gender stereotypes in a clearly hypocritical Instagram reel made for some hypocritical college club page that was being shared widely. So, on account of not being the meek 14-year-old kid I was anymore, I called them out. That reel should not have existed. It’s like a rapist speaking on a panel about women’s safety, insensitive and fundamentally heinous.

I am a firm believer that people evolve over time and it’s important to allow them to rectify their mistakes. But, in a very predictable way, the bullies made themselves the victims and wasted much more time in justifying their actions than it would take to simply apologize. Apparently, it turns out that all the “once a bully, always a bully” people have their reasons. 

Tujhse Naraz Nahin Zindagi

These are bleak and meek times. As the nation fights a deadly second wave of COVID-19, people struggle to regain the normalcy associated with the first wave. The healthcare infrastructure is collapsing while the supreme leader is busy pretending to work 18 hours a day with no results. The virus has infiltrated our houses and I barely know of a house unaffected by it. 

Personally speaking, I haven’t been doing well lately. Just after my uncle recovered from COVID, my mom and grandmother fell prey to it. It’s tough. It has been anything but easy. We have been wearing masks at home for almost a month now. I go to the loo with a mask on. That’s how horrific the situation is. A minor sneeze or slight discomfort in my body makes me scared. To combat these miserable circumstances, I ordered garlic bread the other day which gave me diarrhoea. I have to go to a washroom on the opposite side of my huge house which takes about 15 minutes so in case I plan to go back to sleep at 7AM, I am most likely to fail. Also, we are privileged people. We have enough resources needed to fight the virus but it has broken our morale. I am tired of ranting to my best friend, Gangaur and there is nothing I crave more than to roam freely in my house without a mask on. To add to the problems, my other best friend and I had a fight and now we are no longer on talking terms. My friend circle is torn apart and I miss those zoom calls and playing fuck, marry, kill until 3 in the morning. I miss being able to say that I follow the precautions just by wearing a mask as a mere accessory. Though what I miss the most is my mom’s cooking, which says a lot about the role we have made women play for 2000 oppressive, patriarchal years. A homemaker’s sickness devoids a home of its very spine and yet all we do is romanticize and glorify their pain.

Thattathin Marayathu (transl. Beneath the Shadow of the Veil)

 

I was trying to stalk two seniors from school a few minutes ago when I stumbled upon a picture of my ex with one of them, dating back to 2017. Note that we never really dated but I was so close to them (not them to me though) that a mere ghosting incident felt like a brutal break-up. I was devastated beyond the capability of my catharsis. I remember crying like a baby deep in hunger, the Diwali lights blazing both my incessant tears and the eyes producing them. It was a cinematic muse, an inspiration for art and words that I am typing at the moment. I was a 15-year-old 10th grader in 2017 and they were a college freshman. It’s a sight to behold how different we all look from our high school years. I have grown and highlighted my hair. They have shed their cuteness and replaced it with a very protective, rugged look. I don’t think they are aware of my hair. I don’t know if they know that I look nothing like Jon Snow from Game Of Thrones, as they predicted. I wonder if they know that my love for Malayalam actors and cinema has only grown. I want to ask them if they borrowed their personality from a Muslim Malayalam actor. I want to rave about Parvathy and Kumbalangi Nights and Joji with them. I want to talk about that amazing dance reel by two Malayali medicos on Rasputin that now has almost 10M views. Or do I? I don’t think I possess an answer. I don’t want to go to a person who just can’t reciprocate my feelings no matter how hard they try. I deserve better. I don’t want to be that underconfident, miserable and perplexed person I used to be some months back. 

A personality trait, good or bad being subjective, is that I can’t hold grudges. I am always likely to forgive people no matter how greatly they hurt me. I have found, over years, that this helps me to move on. Vengeance is never a healthy emotion. How do you get over a person when you’re constantly wanting to hurt them back? I believe in forgiving people so that they still respect me as a person and vice-versa. 

I still have no idea how I would react if I come across them in the city bazaar or in a millennial café. Would they recognize me? I sometimes try to find them in random strangers I never come across more than once. Are they so magnificent? I know them enough to know that they are long asleep right now.

In the pursuit of progressive men

Nothing much has been going on in my life. I live a boring life where a mere hangout with my male friends lands me into a deep existential crisis about my morals and beliefs as a feminist. Indian teenage boys thrive on rape jokes, constant objectification of women, porn riddled with the male gaze, homophobia, misogyny and transphobia. Sometimes I feel sad and sorry for the women associated with these young men for they’re constantly stripped of their agency and individuality just because men fail to know any better. Younger brothers being chaperones to their elder sisters is one such example we see every day but fail to evaluate. I have identified as a feminist for as long as I can recall but in a household devoid of daughters, it wasn’t until I turned 18 that I started realizing the deep-rooted patriarchy, casual sexism and misogyny which have always existed. And now I can’t help but notice this in everything, everywhere. Men romanticizing the toil and misery of their mothers instead of contributing in the housework. Men wanting homely wives. Men justifying dowry but hating on that one stereotypical gold-digger from some Punjabi music video. Men slut-shaming Swara Bhaskar for her masturbation scene in Veere Di Wedding as if they don’t joke about their penises and their emissions most of the time. Men calling effeminate men “chakka” or “meetha” as if they don’t sexualize lesbians to death. It’s a sick experience hanging out with guys and I really hope these men don’t give trauma to the women they date. Just men being men and women having to change themselves because of them. 

Where are all the progressive men?

Futile catharsis

 I have always had problems letting go of people. If I were to list my biggest flaws,it would be one of them. This flaw gets so big that it starts to outshine my self-esteem and ego. And I end up as a creep. Not that I want to, more like I can't help myself. This usually revolves around the same set of people. Indifferent, ambiguous, undecipherable people. People who aren't even thinking about me rn. People I am trying my level best not to go back to. I am very likely to succeed. These people make me play with my career. These people turn my reason into wildness. These people make me feel much smaller than I already do.

I have been feeling very lonely lately. Loneliness that makes me cry and want to run away. Loneliness that is lethal and lethargic. Loneliness that is futile.

I listen to music to shut down the myriad of thoughts that try to penetrate my head, as if they are arrows with sharp heads. It used to succeed, but now it just becomes another realm inside my head. Even the gayest of songs don't shut this black hole, afterall black holes suck in anything that gets near them.

My cousin says that our mind is very powerful—if it wants to prove something delusional, it will find proofs to do so. I kind of second him. I can list the probable reasons for whatever I'm going through and they will sound quite intellectual.

But a strong part of me does realize that there need not be any reason and my head is merely trying to validate its triumph over me.