This is going to be a long and serious one, also my most personal post till date, so if you are rushed now, I suggest you come back later, else get yourself a cup of coffee and bear with me while the orange and gold leaves of Fall weave their way up to your doorstep. While you free the sad summer’s song tangled in your head somewhere, let me tell you a story - mine. I will not appear for quite some time now, so let this sink in for a while…
There is a road somewhere out there which leads to nowhere in particular but along which are scattered some cranberry stained memories, that bleed the same way that hearts do, but this is not about bleeding nor pain, this is about redemption and hope and people with voices that come to you and whisper to you in the dead of a hopeless night urging you to live. And this is what this post is about. “I am too close to Heaven for this Hell to be mine…” My cotton candy fingers are tracing silhouettes of faces in the misty window panes even as I write this.
Six years back, I was just a nobody living in the flow, not fighting it, nor resisting it, going through the motions, not moving forward nor backward, not deliriously happy nor despairingly hopeless, but I was there somewhere, in a sort of suspended blur of consciousness, and today I look at me, and I have to thank the Lord for all the people He has sent my way – that have helped me grow and become who I am today. And on Thanksgiving, I recount and remember them all, all of them in some sense constitute family for me or ought to at least.
Before I start enumerating them, I will say this that most often we forget to thank those who tear us apart and destroy us, but they are the ones who deserve the most of our gratitude. For they take on a burden too heavy, heavier than others are willing to bear. They have taken on the mammoth responsibility of helping us grow and learn – more than we could ever hope to learn from all those who are “nice” and “kind” to us. Kind of like earning plenty of karma points in the after-life, but dropping stealth bombs on us during our existence here on earth. Few would agree to do that for us – least of all, those who are “kind” and “loving” to us. We all know it is easier to love than to hate with venom. You tell me, if you had a choice, would you take on the responsibility of being always the one to wound than the one to soothe? I know most of us would opt to be the one who soothes than the one that causes hurt, yet if you think about it from the perspective of the one that wounds, you’ll see that holding up their side of the contract takes a lot more out of them. When you go back up, please don’t forget to thank them, I mean it. I am beginning to understand it all now. Somehow the answers are coming to me, there is of course a difference between “knowing” the answers, and “understanding” them, even after the first two are accomplished, it does not always translate to “accepting” them and finally “embracing” them.
If life is all about experiential learning, then the ones who have touched your life but wreaked havoc in whatever “negative” way, make the best teachers of all. It is true – think about how much you learn and grow from an unhappy experience that tears at the very fabric of your soul, as opposed to a happy one. The unhappy ones win hands down anyday – they build and unbuild and rebuild you. So today on Thanksgiving, I am thinking about all those that caused me endless soulful hurt in whatever way we define hurt in the here-and-now, and I think I am finding it in myself to forgive (no, forgive is a very sanctimonious sort of a word), rather, to thank them for their karmic kindness. I am truly indebted and a little apprehensive too (for it means that I have to return the favor in some future lifetime) and sarcastic little me does not say this in my usual caustic vein, but I really mean this. And I would like you all who read me to revisit things and people in your lives you have been hurt by or are bitter or angry about, from the above perspective and see if you feel differently. I can assure you, you will, as I do today. I already feel differently towards my demons. I am beginning to understand them, appreciate what they have done for me, and before the year is out, I might even find it in me to love them enough to try to make some sense of it all.
And now, about the people in my life who are precious to me and whom I wish to thank for their very presence in my life…most of all, my cousin Enigma, who I am bonded to, beyond the mere commonality of the gene pool. She, of the large generous heart and laughter that reverberates from her very soul can bring a smile to my face even on my worst days. With the heart and spirit of a child and the all-encompassing kindness one gets only from a parent, she ranks up there. She talked me through all of life’s betrayals and did not slight me even when I felt defeated and lost and wept shamelessly – never said “I told you so”. She just opened her doors and her arms and her heart for me. For that, no words are ever enough. Yes, like all others, we have our differences, but we keep growing and learning and each year we grow more understanding of the differences and more appreciation for the commonalities. As sisters go, she is a true soul sister – funny, clumsy, glamorous, generous, and wickedddd and the best creator of chocolate mousse and apple pie a la mode, among other things, and the best giver of hugs and she also knows the best way to wake me - she just comes and sits on my face!
Deb – of Deb, I cannot even begin to say anything that would give meaning to the relationship we share. Sometimes, hearts connect instantaneously of their own accord, and they connect with no notion of nationality, age, color and no notion of how the friendship is going to be sustained across oceans, but the simple knowing inside that everything will be all right and that distances will be immaterial as will be all “physical trappings” but only that the unification in thought will reign supreme as will the connection, beyond life itself. You can all find her on my photos link. She with the wispy golden blonde hair, who dwells with make-believe elves amidst magical glades that end at the steps of a lake and on whose bosom dragonflies land as she and I recline, reading books on a lazy drunk-on-red-wine summer afternoon out in the country in her lakeside cottage with a picnic basket filled with crackers and olives, makes my eyes moist every time I think of her. Unpacking last weekend, I came across millions of small Deb reminders which she had tucked away in my boxes (without my knowledge and to my utter surprise!) as she had helped me pack, all had faieries and frogs and dragonflies somewhere. She sent me her special brand of sparkling magic in a white Container Store corrugated box. And I sat and looked at it all and cried, I have only spoken to her once since coming back to
Cheryl – my teacher, my Reiki master, who taught me all the things I know today, either through her learnings or through my learnings which were gently coaxed by her. Again, by the weekend, I hope to upload Cheryl’s picture on my Yahoo photos, although I look like a starving Ethiopian in that picture, but you can’t miss Cheryl’s gentleness and her human spirit. She gave me affection like my own mother and more when I needed it the most. She helped me through my days and months of a long drawn out discontented winter of 2002, and through the spring of 2003, where I found love and lost it again. She gave me hope that I’ll find it again and told me the perils of dwelling on the Pygmalion Effect – in very simplistic terms, if you expect the worst, you will attract the worst. If I expected to end up lonely and alone, a cranky spinster with two cats, a dog and three goldfish, then that is exactly what I was going to end up as. There is no more singularly powerful force in the world than thought. She also taught me that emotion was good, any emotion. The act of “feeling” never made anyone weak.
D – yes, D. Just that his coming into my life served to open my eyes to what was no longer a way of life for me, had ceased to be one, for me – long back. And I loved him, how I loved him, with all of me, and yet I am a better person today, for him – even without him. We went through two years of a tormented tortuous relationship, marred by impossible odds of success and impossible circumstances – we were doomed even before we had begun, but that has never stopped lovers ever, has it? The knowledge that it can’t go anywhere. That was almost three years ago. Today he is married and happy I presume, I severed all contact and “disappeared” the day he got engaged, even in my warped and twisted world view, I don’t do that. I stay away from “taken” men. I only remember the last time three years ago in June, when we met for the very last time ever in a Mexican restaurant. I was three tequilas down, and I was going to ask him something, all I could say was “Is there…” trailing off, and he said “there is and always will be.” I never forgave him for being so candid and so in love and so intense yet so clinical about it all, knowing that we were not in a position to do anything about it; neither did I ever forget the look in his moist eyes (which he didn’t conceal very well), when he said that. I never told him I loved him. Not once. Not even then. Today, I am beyond forgiveness, I am touching gratitude, he was my first love in the true sense of the word, and he showed me the meaning of that most-often-misused word.
And in the years to follow, there have been many more people who have touched my life and altered it in some tangible way. Skipping quickly to the blog-world – people who have never seen me, yet touched my life in momentous ways….,real quick here…Morphus, whose constant presence and stubborn disregard for my pleas to “leave me alone and work it out in my head” often led me to ease my burdens, and unload and lose some of my demons, as he helped me understand truths I just couldn’t see nor understand. He has a great ear for listening, a vividly sharp perceptive and intuitive mind, a wonderful heart and a lovely bitch called Phoebe.
Maddie, whose infectious madness along with her depth and understanding of life, and her absolutely unparalleled ability to look life and herself in the eye and to laugh at it all and make light of it, gives me endless hope – that I might still make it out of here alive in spirit. We live in parallel worlds, we could have been one another in another lifetime, she is all I ever wanted to be – bold and strong and brave and gentle and beautiful, with the most luscious pair of lips I ever saw!
Samita – an eighteen-year old shaman teacher (of that I am positive) with the wisdom of a thousand sages and the confidence of someone very comfortable with her talents. Of all her talents, her best are the human ones, the humane ones, of understanding people instinctively, offering endless warmth and the much-needed human touch, and standing up fiercely for those she believes in. She warms you up inside. And makes you feel like a child again.
Pratish – for whom words are just not enough and whom I love dearly, because he holds me in the palm of his hand and always looks out for me, and regales me with stories and amazing songs (his own), impersonations and creepy-child voices, and treats me like a fragile Barbie involved in reconnaissance activity, and even grabs my arm and pulls me back when he sees me crossing busy crazy Mumbai roads as if I were taking a walk in a park on a warm July evening! He is utterly insane and utterly adorable, need I say more? Oh and he has an amazing voice!!
Paradox – whose friendship means more to me than I could put into words. Only the dearest of dear friends would feel the way he does – helplessness at not being able to help a friend fight their own battles and make their own way out of a minefield. I am forever grateful for the hand that is ever so ready and eager to make sure I don’t crumble and succumb to life’s pressures and betrayals. They say love is the most powerful thing in the world and the only thing that makes any sense at the end of the day. He understands it like no other.
He-who-shall-not-be-named – Oh well, what do you say, what can you say when part of you understands the motives behind why someone does what he does, and you try your damndest best to see life and things from his perspective and yet the human part of you hurts for the wounds that are left open. I have no ill-will towards him, I loved him, how can you bear ill-will in the same place where love made its home once? Love, like Lysol, is a great cleanser, a great disinfectant – doesn’t let other negative feelings germinate once you’ve washed it down with love. He was a great teacher too, and for that I will always be eternally grateful. And I am also grateful for the fact that coming three years after David, he showed me what it was to experience that emotion all over again and contradict my premise that there wasn’t much else to look forward to in life, and in some sense to give me “hope” that love is always lurking around the corner and you never know when it might jump out at you! He made a believer out of me for some time at least, that is enough. But mostly, gratitude is due for taking on a burden nobody else would have shouldered for me, for holding up his side of the karmic bargain and helping me grow and learn and become more of the person I seem to be becoming everyday – a better, stronger human being. In a strange hopeless sort of a way, he filled me with hope. It’s never too late.
And finally, saving the best for the last - Srik – my brilliant poet-musician with the kindest, largest, most compassionate heart that I have seen so far in life, an intensely private and sensitive person with the most answers I have ever seen in one place in one head and with more compassion than I could ever hope to muster. Like Deb, nothing I could say, nothing at all possibly could even begin to express all the things I would like to say to him, for all the things he has given me, nor could I ever hope to explain in a few typed words the meaning of this very nebulous indefinable but utterly beautiful relationship we share or all the things he stands for. He, who has been backed up into a corner himself for quite a few months now, fighting life against all odds from the most disadvantaged position, fighting a lot of existential material issues, finds it in himself to make my life more bearable, that my private hell bothers him, where else would I find a human being with such a beautiful heart, a human spirit that spills over into everything that he touches? It shows in his poetry, his music. You must read him – is by far the most talented poet-musician I have come across in my real life. On his 24th birthday when he should have been busy drinking himself to oblivion, he found it in him to sit and tell me all the things I should know and why they were the way they were and to hold my hand and to tell me that it would be all right and that the wind would cradle me, and that I was safe. I could have cried, I never loved him more, I swear I would have hugged him to death if there weren’t a goddamn ocean separating us! If I had to make just one wish for all of you today, I would wish that each of you find at least one Srik in your lives and trust me, you wouldn’t want much else ever.
With so many people in my life, how could I not be thankful? I see God everyday – in each of them, and in their little acts of kindness. Would it be trite to say I love them all? Perhaps not. If ever the three words meant anything to me at all, they do when I say them to you all today; I love you – all of you. And I am deeply thankful for your presence in my life. Just take care not to hurt anyone – that, if anything, is the only “absolute” wrong in a world of greys, and love the only “absolute” right. “Love does not care to define and is never in a hurry to do so.” – I forget who said that. Not my words, those.
I have made my peace with death, that is the key. Now I am ready to make peace with life and living and myself. I am laying down my armour today. I am thawing, “still a little frozen, still a little broken, but free…” Find me a piece of sky and push me over the edge – I haven’t used my wings in a long time. I am coming home now. Redemption sounds like a lovely word.
