Ramu writes to learn

 It's been a while, and now it's time to get back. Much has happened, and made to be happened. Good, bad, ugly and beautiful. 

It's time to learn, write and live again.

 

3rd Times the Charm?

It was on a cold and rainy night that the former lovers met. He begged her to come back to him. Leave your husband he argued with her over dinner - this time we'll make it work he promised her. She remained curiously blank. She was willing to concede that she loved him and loathed her husband, but could not, would not return, she said.

He remembered the first time he met her - she'd been a vivacious, bold creature. She'd stood up to him, the school jock and told him to fuck off when he tried to bully a nameless nerd. She'd laughed and told him to grow up when he started failing classes. She'd run away with him when his world collapsed after the death of his mother. They'd been happy together - until her husband came along.

She remembered the deal she'd made with her husband - not knowing the hell he'd create for her. She remembered the vows she'd taken to stay with him in sickness and in health and smiled a little. Just a few months ago she'd nearly broken the deal, broken the vows.

With her world breaking down her lover had convinced her to run away with him for a second time. We'll be happy he'd promised her. But the attempt had failed miserably. The young couple afraid of the powerful old man hadn't gotten far when they realized they were being followed. Panic stricken they had pressed down hard on the accelerator and a gory accident had followed. She was scarred for life, he would always walk with a limp.

She shook her head, there would be no third attempt to run away. She told him she loved him and kissed him one last time before saying goodbye. She walked out onto the balcony for her habitual post-dinner smoke. Her husband sat in a wheelchair, soaked, shivering in the cold. She lit her cigarette and blew the smoke towards him. He whimpered in the dark.

(Plot Credit to Parakram Kakkar - story written as an exercise)

The Doppelganger

She was storming around violently in the other room. Throwing books of shelves, tossing around chairs and the occasional side table. I shivered under the blankets, they were my only shield against her. I'd be safe as long as I remained under them I consoled myself. 

Then, a scarier silence. Had she managed to enter my room? If I peaked out from under my blankets would she be standing, grinning maniacally over my head? I mustered some courage slowly uncovered my face and looked out. Nothing, nothing but the ceiling. I knew she couldn't be hiding under the bed or behind some furniture, I had long since learnt to sleep in a bare room, with no nooks to hide in. 

I turned on the lights in my room, gingerly tiptoed around the house, setting it ablaze with lights. Painfully aware that she would have set the house ablaze. I crawled into bed and waited for my friend to arrive. 

15 minutes later, a patient but unsympathetic friend arrived. She had had enough of my stupid doppelganger fear she said. I agreed, that's why I'd I called her, to distract myself from my over-active imagination. We went around the house shutting off lights and settled down in front of the TV for the weeks fifth slumber party. Comedy, romance, action on the agenda. No horror involved. 

'Don't dwell on it, distract yourself' I was following my therapists advice. My amused psychiatrist had told me not to take my thoughts too seriously. I knew, they knew, we all knew that I knew it was an irrational fear. That I wasn't really scared of my doppelganger. That I didn't really expect to come across myself, lurking in some corner of my living room, hiding behind the curtains, testing the knives in my kitchen.  Yet I wished that someone would take my fear seriously. Surely it meant something. Alas, all my therapists were boring and behavioral, Freud and Jung seemed to have gone out of fashion. My homeopath had taken me seriously, without prompting he had asked me whether I was scared of something, I told him about my doppelganger fear and I could see him earnestly scribbling away 'is scared of ghosts'. sigh....

It was Saturday and after five nights at home, my friend and I were restless. We decided to get dressed, get out, get high and go dancing. Well, apart from the high part - I wasn't allowed to mix meds and mojitos just yet. I was willing to take 3 out of 4, which was not enough. At the club, I sat around bored, it never failed, without alcohol, I just wasn't a party person. The music was too loud, grating, I couldn't dance, my dress was uncomfortable and the smoke made me cough. Don't dwell, distract yourself I repeated my mantra to myself and began looking around, people watching, trying to spot the idiots, trying to score cheap laughs of them. When I spotted her. There she was, yelling at a hapless waiter, picking up the glass and throwing its contents on his face. Bursting out in cackles of laughter, amused at what she'd done. 

My heart was pounding furiously, I wanted to hide before she spotted me. I tried to duck under the table, but it's base was solid. The couch was pushed against the wall and there was no space behind it. It was 12:30 in the night and my friend was lost in the sea of dancers. As I furiously hunted for my friend, all I saw was her. She pulling the hair of her female companion. she treading on a guy's foot with  6 inch stilettos. She burning bits of paper with a lighter. She playing with the knife on the table.  Friend or not I decided to leave and ran out of the room, messaging to let my friend know. Face bent over my phone I ran right into her just outside the club. 

She looked at me, sizing me up. Even though we could have been twins, I could feel the differences. I was shivering, she was composed. Mousy little me next to her. We were wearing the same clothes and yet it was I who was dressed up while she must have casually sauntered out of her house. And then she spoke - 'I should have had you kicked out for my bad behaviour, it's like I'm looking into a mirror'

And then there was a crack. She must have overpowered me and pushed me into a ditch. As I regained consciousness I tried yelling for someone to come save me, but no one could hear me over the din. There were hundreds of voices yelling and screaming, and bright flames licking the night sky. After a while fire engines began to wail and then silence.  In the morning I was finally freed by the police in a manner of speaking. The police refuse to believe me, they refuse to believe that she set the club ablaze. No one remembers her. No one remembers that quiet little thing.

Letting the write one in

It was the night of the Lunar eclipse, witching hour and the three of us stood outside cackling curses at the clouds. There they were, making sure we wouldn't see, that we couldn't see, the moon. It was very rude of them, we sulked, to come and spoil our fun.

Disappointed and embarrassed, the pointy hats had come out for no reason and our neighbors were now staring at us for want of nothing better to look at, the three of us trooped indoors.

My sisters left me to brood the unfairness of a lunar eclipse devoid of occult experience. I had been sure that something would happen, I had pinned my hopes and happiness on something happening.

It wasn't new. I have been pinning my hopes and happiness on something happening for a long time now. Indicators of something happening have included, online horoscopes, the number of mynahs I spotted and wishes made on shooting stars (which must have been airplanes). I was willing to dress up, make believe, party, make an ass of myself, be self-deprecating, day dream, build fantasies but I was not willing to work, try something, fail......

When a scream interrupted my inner monologue. My sisters came flying out of our bedroom. Followed by a bat. Followed by my mothers ultimatum to stop screaming and get the bat out! Balcony doors were opened and because of the power of the witching hour, with the help of my polite but firm directions the little spazzed vampire found an exit and left.

The pointy hats came out again and the three witches sat and dissected the Bat episode. It was renamed the vampire episode, the significance of the lunar eclipse was discussed, perhaps we had discovered a vampire-werewolf hybrid. We disagreed over which one of us it had come to meet or eat. We agreed that it was the power of my sisters screaming and the help of my imagination that made it look like the bat left after my directions. We cackled gleefully and my mother called us batty. Which made us cackle some more. I went to sleep with a smile on my face, something had happened.

Something which made me want to write again. It wasn't easy, I wrote and rewrote this post a hundred times over. I added a phrase, or a line, or a paragraph every week. I excised awful alliterations ('clouds cutting into a celestial conga line'), entire themes which were ahem clouding the post. I started laughing at horoscopes again and I stopped wishing on plucked out eyelashes. I started an internship, I applied for a job and I got a job. My confidence in myself increased.

But those single mynahs continued to plague me. So tonight, on a night which is simply a hard days night I've finished the post. I've written the last few paras, I've reworked the alliteration into the post (even if I had to use a parenthesis) and added one more. Tomorrow when I see two mynahs, I'm not going to wait for something nice to happen, I'm going to come back and change the have in the fourth paragraph to a had.

The chicken or the Egg

Which came first? The chicken or the egg? According to The Second Book of General Ignorance, it was the egg. Well, duh!

But which one is the egg and which one is the chicken? Are these feelings of insecurity caused by depression, or am I depressed because I've always been a little insecure.

It's been a long year. It's been exactly one year. And it's been a horrid year of unbroken depression. At the end of it, I find myself, crippled, unable to take on even the simplest of tasks without straining myself, second guessing my beliefs and finally acknowledging the fact that I seem to have lost all direction. Useless, is the word I'm beginning to associate the most with myself.

I need to know which came first. If insecurity is the egg that hatched the depression, well I need to make myself useful, build a little self-confidence, the onus is on me. If it's depression,I can wallow some more and pray that the medication works.

I hope it's depression. I have more faith in meds than me.

Paranoia

As I lay awake last night, I could hear myself in the other room, walking around, turning on lights, opening drawers, pulling apart curtains, looking for something, searching for someone. I waited for the door to burst open, for me to enter, maniacally happy to have finally found the person I was looking for, me, shivering in the night, cowering under the sheets.

Some people are deathly scared of death, others of ghosts, dogs, dustbins or snakes. I don’t need a boggart to show me what I’m scared of, a mirror will do.

I thought of locking the room, but a calm voice in my head assured me that it wouldn’t help, I was already in the room, there was no keeping me out. I was already there to talk, to taunt and to hurt.

When I’m showering I make sure I never close my eyes, I check underneath the bed and behind the curtains whenever I enter an empty room and I’ve removed the bed from my hostel room.

I know what I'm scared of, but I don't know why, maybe it's all in the head, my head.

Spent the last semester a little stir crazy. Spent half of my time wishing to fall down a rabbit hole, spent the other half trying to make that happen by doing a lot of crazy things.

New semester break, new city, new internship, new medication but same old heart break. There were a couple of posts written about learning to walk, walking out of the woods, but the truth is that I seem to be walking in circles.