Lost a Love

I cried for my writing today. I sat and wept like a friend had been lost, a loving dear friend who was with me during the hardest of times. It felt crippling, like I could no longer find myself, like a foundation I had built myself on was suddenly demolished.

I was in denial.

“I am writing professionally” I would say to the people who asked about the whereabouts of my non existent blogs. “Working on personal stuff”, I told my editor over over and again.

I read books on writing, I read books on non writing, I read books on fiction. I swam, I ran, I cycled. I tried auto rides, I tried the highs, I tried the lows. But none of them worked.

I tried getting inspired, I tried to let myself go, I tried writing for myself. I tried holding on to that string of hope that it was there, somewhere inside me.

But there I was, stuck .

Where did it go? I had to find it. So I spoke to people, tired forgetting about it, try to freewrite, try to journal. But the more I tried, the more it went away from me.

Then it turned to blame.

I blamed anything and everything possible – the weather, the work load, the lack of inspiration in my life.

But finally, today –

I said it out loud – “I have lost a friend”.

Oh friend, dear friend, please come back.

The Lost Letters

One of the most incredible things I found when I was unearthing and sorting out my ancestral home towards a renovation were the letters.
Army trunks and cupboards filled with letters – handwritten ones, printed ones, greeting cards, drawings, handmade cards, photographs and many other kinds of letters dating from 50-60 years back!

Can you imagine how exciting it was to see them! I found letters I had written as a kid, signing off with
“I love you Achamma and Achacha,
Your loving granddaughter,
Ananya”
– in the handwriting I was forming as a kid.

I carried whatever I could to Bangalore with me, to share them with family here, where we sat and sorted out the letters. The feeling was very special indeed – definitely made me feel glad that we lacked social media and other digital methods of communicating as kids, the presence of which would have killed the existence of these letters.

But even when the letters to Grandparents stopped when MSN messenger came by, the storytelling through letters didn’t. It became a method of communicating with my best friend next door, when her parents didn’t allow us to chat while standing in the balcony. We wrote to each other – through little chits of papers, or handmade books made for this – with our stories of crushes, love, friends and boys.
Our postbox? Well, it was a little ‘Vaseline’ box tied to our balconies, thrown into the other’s balcony every time we wrote letters ( we lived in an apartment in it’s 4th floor). The others called us silly – why would you do this when you had Orkut and Facebook and Yahoo messenger? But this was our special way of communicating, and we didn’t stop till we left Kuwait.

And once we did, it stopped.

*

No hand written letters, no hand made cards, no blaberring in illegible handwriting, nothing.

*
Until recently, I decided that I was going to write letters again. So I looked online for penpals, strangers I was going to pour my heart into through letters. But this didn’t work out. They were very hard to find, and didn’t feel personal enough.

That’s when, giving a sign that you don’t need strangers to write letters to, a friend of mine, sent a handwritten letter to me. But guess what, in this world where the only letters you receive are bank statements and advertisements, this letter got buried in a pile of letters in the security’s cabin.( until I made them dig it out from it)

But this was a very different letter from the ones I shared with my grandparents. With WhatsApp serving the purpose of exchange of immediate information, this letter was filled with the explanation of that moment when he wrote the letter, what made the moment, what were the emotions that filled it, what that moment could have been, what he would like it to be. It showed how long a moment could be, how short it could be. It showed his thought moving, through the scratches and lines over his words.
Unlike the processed, finished, plastic writing that made emails , this letter was raw, showed imperfections, and with that, had a soul. His handwriting told a story, how it changed through the letter, how the speed of his thoughts changed the way he formed his letters. It had a scent of the place he wrote from, the pen he used, it had so much more than just a “from” recipient.

Letters collected over the years now

So here I am back to writing letters. Letters from places I visit – that I write through the journey, letters that I write when I am down, letters that bring clarity, letters that define moments and best of it all, letters that bring happiness!

An Instagram story from today!

Don’t you think it will be amazing if all of us begin writing these letters again?

Just Taking a Walk

Last evening, if you were passing by the Cubbon Park by any chance, you would have seen me – hopping, skipping and swaying to the music while walking through the streets. I was almost dancing through the streets of Bangalore – enjoying every moment of it. I was in love with all of it – the music, the surroundings, the streets of Bangalore, the people around – to whom I was giving the widest smile I could possibly give. It was absolute bliss.

So as soon as I ended my walk and got into the crowded metro to get back home – I got my phone out, began to pen down the feeling I just felt. I began to write about the cool breeze that made the plants and the trees ruffle – the random leaves that fell on the ground. I wrote about the people walking around me – the lady who I followed because I thought she was on her way to metro as well but ended up going in another direction. The guy I clung to (without him knowing) for crossing the roads because I was freaked out about doing it myself. I wrote about how beautiful the street lights and the cars looked zooming past me at the signal. I wrote about the large canopy of the trees and the buildings around me – also about how my feet got stuck in the wet mud leaving me with very messy feet.

But the more I wrote about it, I realized that these were words that I had been writing and rewriting over the last few years. And the Bangalore I was complaining about for the whole of last year suddenly seemed different today – making me wonder, was I not giving her a chance?

Moving Forward

I have never really shifted homes in my entire life.

The house I lived in Kuwait for the first 18 years of my life is the same one I go to even now. The closest I have come to shifting homes is moving from college hostel to an apartment and then from that apartment to another one. But considering the amount of time I take to get attached to a place, the 3 years I spent in those places was too less a time for me to get emotionally connected. My attachment was to the people, the city, not really the house as such.

And so, shifting was never an emotional affair for me. Organize things – pack it into boxes – leave. And I never had more stuff than what could fit into two suitcases – anything more was discarded. A few memories would pop up, beautiful ones which I would pleasantly remember. But that’s it. Nothing more than that.

So with that experience of shifting homes, I went to Janaky Sadan – my ancestral home to prepare it for a renovation.

(To give you some context – this is a house my grandparents built, about 60 years back. My dad and his brothers grew up there, but by the time we kids were born, we had moved to Kuwait, so none of us really spent time here. But we have always had fond memories of staying here – summer vacations, times spent with grandparents.)

The house is extremely filled – the walls are filled, with pictures and portraits, childhood pictures, it acted more like a museum of our stories. The floor was filled, with furniture – intricately carved stools, tables and chairs – some which I had never even noticed earlier.

But shifting, I realized the hard way – was way more emotionally stressful than it was physically.

It was in layers – the first layer of recent accumulation was easy. The more deeper I went, the more time moved back. Decades and decades of stories. Photographs, letters, cards, Achachan’s (my granddad’s) army trunks filled with more items of the times I have only heard in stories.

Mixed emotions – the excitement of finding these artifacts from ages back – followed by sadness that these are just memories now. Each little thing I transferred into boxes, came with cartloads of emotions.

By the end of it of transferring and packing everything in the house to a rented house close by, when I looked back at the empty home – a feeling of sadness had taken over me. But at times, the sadness would be intermixed by happiness of the realization that the place is now transforming – redefining itself, to a better future.

If only Achamma and Achachan could be a part of this redefinition.

Homesickness

I write this blog, as I sit in a broken down car – outside a random police station about 20km away from home. I’m at least 5 hours late in my personal schedule for today, and I don’t see myself getting back home in at least an hour.

I have been having random fun conversations with the police and my driver, making it one of the only normal conversations I had today. But oddly enough, one of the topics we have been discussing about is very close to heart. It is about homesickness.

*

Let’s say this story began around 2:30 this afternoon, when I had to – very slyly,  almost kick my very reluctant brother out of my home to send him off to hostel.

As we set out on the long 2 hour journey towards the school, battling heavy Bangalore traffic along with some crazy rain and wind, I thought of the times 5 years ago, when I felt similar feelings as my little brother was now feeling going towards hostel. As my brother slept after whining for a bit, I enjoyed the sights around me – planning the rest of the day. I was to go for a little bit of shopping at commercial, eat some Mango delicacies from a Mango fest that was happening at Indira Nagar and figure out a lot of things in line for the next week.

Well, the series of unfortunate events began right after that. The ‘hesitant to enter hostel’ brother I had left outside the hostel, decided to vanish.

After running around and looking for a bit, we found him almost a km away, chilling on the road.

This led to multiple conversations with random people of the school, and the time I had to spend at the school stretching from 5 mins to 5 hours.

5 hours later, as I got a vehicle back home, finally relaxing with some music in the long journey back home after a long day, I get informed that the cab’s wheel had gotten punctured – ending up in front of the police station I’m sitting on front of.

*
6 years back, when I entered the college hostel for the first time, I was extremely excited to be joining hostel. Life without parents, life which was run by myself – independence – was something I was looking forward to. Early morning, I entered the hostel with all my luggage – for setting up the room I was going to be using for the next 5 years of my life.

I still remember the professor talking about the course and giving us an insight into how life would be as an architecture student. “Some of you would be having some kind of homesickness – help each other out or talk to people if you can’t handle it”, she told the class. I cracked a joke about this with the stranger who was sitting next to me.

But that’s where the issue began.

For a long time after that, the stranger never stopped being one. Nobody at my hostel stopped being a stranger. However friendly my room-mates or hostel mates were, I couldn’t treat them as a friend. According to me, my friends were far away – like my family and I was never going to be as happy as I was with them. I couldn’t deal with being away from them.

I couldn’t understand why I felt this way – I couldn’t accept the fact that I was homesick.

And since I was in denial about homesickness, I didn’t know whom to talk about this new depression that had taken over me. This was attached with a couple of other symptoms – lack of an appetite, uncontrollable tears (especially during phone calls), and long periods of time I used to spent in the washroom (probably crying).

All I wanted to do was give up, leave the hostel, go back home and stay there forever. I didn’t care if I had or didn’t have a career, I didn’t care about my dreams, I just wanted to be home.

Today, I don’t recognize that girl.

*

So hey little brother, this will pass. One day, when you look back and think about how difficult life was – you wont remember the difficulty. Then you will smile – thinking how far you have reached from there.

 

 

 

 

 

GoodBye 2017

Around 8am on the last day of 2017, I was forcefully woken up from bed by the door bell ringing continuously – creating noise pollution my very peaceful sleep couldn’t handle. Just as the very groggy me dragged my feet to the main door to open it, I was taken aback by the energy of a crowd of people standing at my doorstep. The crowd and the energy sustained through out what was remaining of 2017 and the beginning of 2018.

And I think there couldn’t be a better ending to the stories circling around me through 2017.

This is a picture I had taken on my polaroid camera  on that day. This to me, summarises the day and the whole of 2017.

When I look at it, I don’t just see people standing there.

I see the people who are there – and the people who would have been there had this been an year earlier but aren’t. 2017 was a year of understanding people – understanding character and finding new people. People – who within a short period of time became pretty close to heart. Also, people who very close to heart to heart went away very soon.

I see the place I now call home, and the transformation that life took after I got here.

I see the context of Bangalore and linked to that – the new job, the independent life outside college, life as an architect.

I see ‘the dab’ and the person who told me “Annachi, 2017 is getting over, all of us are together – only good vibes okay?

2017 shook me up – took a lot from me – but along with that, gave a lot too. For one, it gave me the smile that you see in the picture.

It taught me the value of love, life and people.

I began to actually believe the cliché that was spoken about living in the moment.

The best version of you is the one you are right now. Your favorite person in the world is the person you are with right now. The best place you have been to is the one you are at now.

The best moment of your life is now.

I wish all of you a very happy 2018!

 

Home

I got into a deep dilemma today when I decided to get back to Facebook after a long time. They kept asking me where my home town was and I didn’t have any answer for it!
So, I decided to write a story – about my hometown.

*

For the first year of my life, I lived in a little village in the north of Kerala. I don’t know how I felt about the place, but I guess I liked it (I seemed to be smiling in all the pictures). After a year, I was shipped off to a tiny country in the corner of the Arabian sea – Kuwait. I guess I was sad leaving all the people behind, but I was excited to explore a new place (or that’s what my mother says). That tiny country was home for sixteen long years of my life.
I was passionate about the place.
To anybody in Kuwait, I was from India – but to anybody anywhere else, I was from Kuwait. Although I was always happy to come back to the tiny village in Kerala once in two weeks, I would miss Kuwait within a month. It was always “go to India” and “come back to Kuwait”. The little 2bhk flat which we didn’t even own was the definition of home to me.
My Facebook page said “Home: Kuwait city” – even though I didn’t know how to speak even a word of Arabic.

The sixteen years at Kuwait got over and I got back to India to a place which was closer to the place my passport defines as home. I said goodbye to Kuwait in tears because I knew it wasn’t going to be the same anymore. I became homesick, cursing the little city in the south of Kerala. I hated my bed, it’s surroundings, the city and its people.
Trivandrum was the definition of hell to me and I counted the number of months I had to wait to get back to my bed in Kuwait. Ultimately, I was desperate for my 5 years to get over, so that I could go back home to Kuwait and work there.
But the 6 months I had to wait to get back to Kuwait, changed things for me. I began to explore the city on my own, something I never did in my life. But Kuwait was always home.
After a while I began to enjoy India and slowly as I began exploring it, I realised the idea of traveling was more home to me than having four walls with some personal space within it.

So, the traveling to Kuwait reduced. I was happy to go there when I had to, but the messy tearful goodbyes stopped. I went to Kuwait when my visa required it, and the rest of the time, made myself home at random people’s houses and hotel rooms.
I knew I wasn’t in love with Trivandrum, just the freedom (to explore) it provided. (Or that’s what I thought)

As time got closer to the end of the 5 years in Trivandrum, things got confusing. I found myself staring at the streets reliving the memories they have given me. Some early morning bus journeys bought tears in my eyes. But Trivandrum was always going to be there.

The tears didn’t make sense.

The actual moment of leaving Trivandrum didn’t matter as much as the point when someone from Trivandrum asked me if i was still there so that we could hang out. It wasn’t the place that I missed, it was the people that made the place.
The question Facebook is asking is much more complicated than just two coordinates.

*

So, what really is home?
Is it your bed? Or the space around your bed? Or the house? Or a place? Can memories be your home? Is home a feeling? Or do the people around you make your home?
Can you have more than one home?

We Make Memories

I hated the city I lived in. It absolutely meant nothing to me. I knew that after five years, when I will finally get out of this city, I would make sure I’ll never get back here.
I had this hatred in mind when two days back, a mistake call to my cousin informed me that he would be coming to the city and we could hang out for some time.
I felt all the excitement and happiness drowning in the anxiousness that followed.
Where could we possibly ‘hangout’ in this boring city?

The next day morning, when I got a call from him asking where we should meet up, I had no idea.
“Any malls here?” he asked.
“Nope”
And with that I kind of predicted what kind of day it was going to be.
Asking a few batch mates proved that my perspective was common
“What can you do here? Take to him some restaurant I guess.”

At the end of the day, that was just what happened. We ended up spending all our time in restaurants and cafes in different parts of the city.
But the day wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

Actually it was pretty awesome.

Sitting on the bus back to hostel I wondered, ‘How come the day went good?’

The place never actually matters I guess. Whether sitting in the cafe just like we did, walking in mall or hanging upside down on roller coaster, the experience would have been the same because it was the same person I was with. As an upcoming architect, I’m being a hypocrite saying this. All we learn about is the feel of spaces and what people experience standing inside them. Maybe that matters too but I just realized that what matters more are the memories we in make in them. The people you meet and the memories you make with them is what makes a place special. Maybe the number of malls, the award winning buildings or the kind of food available may shape the image of the place you have in your mind but it can never make the image.
This thought made me rethink about my life here in the last 2 years. My first heartbreak, my first bike ride, my first shot at independence, my first job – all these are distinctive memories along with my friends and the people that I met here that makes up an image of this city in my mind. And it’s definitely a pretty image and the upcoming time will mold this image further. So there is no point saying ‘my city is boring’. It’s you, with the people around you who must together make it a beautiful memory you can think of and smile in the future.