Parasitic Relationship

Winter of my relationship has arrived. I hope to live through it, which is not easy. Sometime I wonder what kind of people I have surrounded myself with: people who are interested in me when I am happy and when I agree with them, if not then I am to be left alone. I have made a ‘Losers’ list today, for they are going to lose me, the real me. Also, I am listening to their sighs, comments, and plain ignorance. Depression has become dear to me, and so are anti-depression medications: I can take as many I want to or hoard them or sell them, if I don’t want them. 

For next couple of months, things will look gloomy and then the sun will be out. Then, the blackness that has covered me and cornered me will be disappeared. Then, if time or situation permits, I will laugh at myself: why did I make myself susceptible to these parasitic relationships? 

 

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Beyond Repair

What has gotten into her? He broke her heart, she cried. She picked herself up and started to live life again. Hurt followed her wherever she went. The sight of lovebirds tortured her. Seeing a recently ditched bit or girl, particularly those who didn’t have their shit together, calmed her a little bit. She went to then talked to them, consoled them and only then she felt a little happy in her heart: she wasn’t alone in this shit and there are people who are worse then her. 

But this feeling was fleeting and she didn’t know anyone new who had recently broken-up with his/her partner and whose life was in shambles. As a result, she couldn’t get her high from talking such people and this absence left her low, very low, emotionally. 

Exasperated, she wondered what went wrong between her and her boyfriend. And she didn’t find anything wrong with her. He broke up with her because he was angry with her or he didn’t understand her or she didn’t match her expectations or his friends thought she was a controlling bitch or she stole the money from his account or she was feeling lost and alone when he went on vacation with his friends or they didn’t talk to each other for a month or her monthly cycle matched with their fighting episodes. She didn’t have the answers but whatever it was it was not her fault.

 

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Imposter Syndrome

He was told that he was selected from a pool of some twenty students. Three other universities, although smaller ones, also gave him admission. These options gave him strange and powerful sense that he had excelled in his life. Now that he’s a graduate student in one of prestigious programs at a high ranked university, he believed everything is going to be easier for him in life. 
And then he entered the department and saw the scientists in real sense, unlike when he met them during recruitment weekend when everyone seemed cool and laidback. But now they’re all talking science and technology. None of their conversations veered of from the common theme: research work. The list of research papers, patents and awards on the walls of corridor terrified him. The fellow grad students, after hi and hello and customary smile, continued their work: despite the fact they looked overworked and overwhelmed. Still they continued.  
For a moment, he thought he chose the wrong place. Next moment, he thought otherwise, it dawned upon him that all grad programs must be like this, with little variations. So, after walking around in the ‘real’ department, he sat down on this lab desk. A weakness, not the power which he felt till he stepped in the department, had settled in his heart: will he be able to work like these grad students or finish the grad program or able to write these many research papers etc? He didn’t tell this to anyone even though everyone who has stepped in this program for the first time must have felt the variation of the same experience. 
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Genius in Making

He was my favorite writer and I happened to meet him when he was very young. Now that when I looked back, he didn’t show any signs of being a genius which he is now. I could have written a magazine article on him. But I cringed in thinking why didn’t I pick the early signs of his genius. Or was his genius was burdened under the weight of heavy expectations he had from himself or simply he hasn’t learnt to adhere to his true calling (he was probably dabbling in this and that, mostly to tell or impress others). Or maybe I didn’t read his best writing or pieces where there were signs of early excellence.
Or quite simply (means I had been really hard on myself) he wasn’t a genius at that time. He was a simple man, just living his life. And that maybe because life hadn’t hit him hard and hadn’t put him on the course of being a genius.

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Intelligent Fear

He was an intelligent kid but he didn’t know everything. He used to think that one must know everything, in his naivete. So he used to fear venturing out in unfamiliar territories. What if he didn’t understand the thing or place or question? There were kids less smarter and intelligent than him, who moved ahead of him. He just saw them eclipsing the standard earlier set by him. He used to see them and cry in the corner of his house, blaming everyone except himself that if these kids weren’t stopped they will beat him in submission but he didn’t do anything. He didn’t take risk. Why would he downgrade his(proven) intelligent status, just by taking the risk that might make him the most intelligent one? 

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Looked at her in Love

“Do you spend some time thinking about what you want to say? Or you bitch about what you feel right at that moment? And do you think bitching about me to others would cure your problems?” He stuttered.

She said, “You also think before you speak. If you hurt me like that, don’t expect anything better from me?”

“Hurt? Do you even know that it spelled differently than a heart?”

“If you want to make fun of my education, go for it. Then, expect to hear unpleasant things amid your horrible stutter. It’s only me who had accepted you against the wish of my parents.”

“So do you feel bad about it now?”

“I wish I hadn’t pitied you.”

“Just think about this sentence. What do you get out from uttering such sentences?”

“I say what I feel like. It’s you who deduces different meanings from these simple sentences. What I mean is always clear?”

How can he defend himself in the absence of love? Just when he realized that how childish or unpleasant he would sound doing that, he looked away from him and told her to go away before he could say something that he would later regret.

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Youth In Love

What’s the problem with youth? They just think that they’re not going to be old, someone else will. They believe that anger, power, and strength are here to stay. But if you haven’t learned humility and compassion- you will become that cantankerous old person that sulks in the house, railway train compartments, or in busy markets. Timing is also important. If you don’t understand these things at right time, you’re likely to screw your relationships- where you and your partner keep fighting over these things and you flaunt your ignorance as to the only truth, if not a virtue. But one day when you sit in a broken cot with a stick by your side and no one to take care of you- then you will understand things but that’ll be late. Sometimes things that you learn at the wrong time can so much far-reaching and painful effects and the pain of realization is enough to kill a person. You probably have heard of people dying asleep.

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Monkeys Playing Trumpets

He had heard this music somewhere. May not be in this incarnation but in previous incarnations or some other dimensions which he often visited during his marijuana trips. He followed that music in the daze and didn’t care where it was leading him to. There was no road, just the forest and he made his way through the bushes and shrubs. Then, something fell on his head. He fell unconscious. Last thing he remembered was the rain-drenched smell of the vegetation and soil of the forest.

When he regained the senses, he found himself stripped of clothes and saw four monkeys tearing his clothes apart. And two who didn’t have the piece of cloth, had the trumpets in their hands and they had been playing them. It was the noise of the trumpets that lured him in this forest. Now, these trumpets sounded the cloth being torn even when the monkeys had been chewing the cloth. Their expressions told me that the way they had surrounded me, they weren’t going to leave me alone.

This is going to be my end. I just felt that. Because now the trumpets had been emitting the voice of cry that resembled mine. In between, the trumpets had been melodious: reminding me the memories of my childhood and then the dirge it played, where I realized that how I helped my mother to kill herself; she was just miserable. The villagers had thrown me out of the village. I survived on the dumpster and throwaway food items.

Everywhere I went, people identified me: the real me, the killer. “How do you know?” I asked.

“The look in your eyes,” they said, and added, “We don’t feed the killer here.”

I went to a new place, hoping for a change.

“No killer allowed here.”

“I’m not.”

“You are the worst of the killer: mother killer.”

There was no point hiding the truth now.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“The smell on your hands, you know.”

“You know I didn’t kill my mother; I liberated her.”

“You blaspheme here. Only god liberates; you killed her.”

“Please feed me or I’ll die from hunger.”

 “We don’t want to anger the god here; we’re mere mortals.”   

Now people even stopped throwing leftover feed in dumpsters. There was a discussion or meeting among the villagers about me and about let’s just say about ‘my liberation.’ Drinking water actually worsened my appetite; my stomach started to eat itself.

I ate the leaves for survival. It’s then, I came across those serrated tiny aromatic leaves and I ate them. I lay there. I slept and woke up. I ate some more and slept again. I don’t know how long I did that. It’s when people poked me with sticks and goaded me with the pointy objects, I got up. “Don’t just die on us. This village hasn’t had any rain in the past. Please, please we implore you, you leave from here and die elsewhere.”

“Where?” I beseeched them.

An elderly lady with white beard and soft voice told me, “Listen to the sound that belongs to you. You go there. Therein you’re your salvation.”

The monkeys had already nibbled my feet and now they are pulling out the thigh muscles. The music had been continuously playing, maybe that’s why I didn’t feel the pain or was this the effect of marijuana, I don’t know. Or because I had experienced so much pain in my life that my pain threshold had gone up. Whatever the reason, I didn’t feel pain.

Strangely the monkeys stopped, when they ate my lower half. I lay in the pool of my own blood. Two of the monkeys pulled out my thighbones and marked them distinctly with their teeth. Then, they dug the ground underneath, put their bones into the ground, left a few leaves on it and left me. Two of them, who got the bones, seemed most happy. Maybe two of them are going to get their own trumpets. Two parts of me are going to live as an organ of music. And parts of me will once again call me for my liberation. I stayed there thinking, how long it will take for me to die.

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Cloth Logo on Elbows of Shirt

 

He was overconfident. And laughed at my request of asking jhunjhuna, a musical instrument for my child. “Do you want a jhunjhuna?” he laughed.

“Yes,” I said. “What there to laugh about?”

“Nothing. I just…”

“No, tell me.”

“Come on, brother. Who asks for jhunjhuna nowadays?”

“Really?”

“I don’t mean to say that they don’t ask for this. But they ask it with an English name like baby rattle. You don’t seem that uneducated to me.”

“Can you judge a person’s educational status by how he asks certain things?”

“I don’t. But in this case, I couldn’t resist.”

“I asked for a jhunjhuna because I think if I use the word rattle, you may not understand me.”

“Brother, your understanding of education is kind of outdated.”

“Maybe you are right.”

“But I didn’t expect a person who wears official clothes like you to ask for a jhunjhuna. Please don’t mind me.”

“Can I get a jhunjhuna?”

“You will get a jhunjhuna for sure. Brother, you are cracking me. But I’m not going to laugh anymore at you.”

He went through the piles of kids’ toys, pulled out a jhunjhuna and handed it to me, laughing. Then, he put his hand over his face. When he couldn’t resist laughing, he said sorry to me.

I knew he was making fun of me and my education, without even having slightest idea about my education. My wife watched all this happen and stared at me, as if to tell me why aren’t you saying something to him. I could’ve said something to him or thrashed him in front of others. The owner of the shop would have supported me on this for his misbehavior as customers aren’t easy to come by and he was just a temporary worker here. I could have pulled out some judgemental shit from inside of me and might have belittled him.

But then, my eyes fell on the elbows of his shirt. There was a cloth logo there, which was an unusual place for a cloth logo to be. It was more like this shirt had been torn due to overuse and it was mended with a cloth logo. I could have probably made fun of his mended shirt and his chatterbox nature. Instead, I took the jhunjhuna, paid the amount, which my wife thought was a little too much and returned home. As I walked back home, I heard my mother telling me something about poverty and people working to make ends meet.

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Huddling

What drove the chicks to huddle? Cold or loneliness? Living under the light and heat of light bulb, over a cardboard box covered with a newspaper and munching on the grounded feed, they wander here and there. Sitting outside of chamber, the worker watched them.

A few chicks, the weaklings, the one who wanted to have most heat made their way to the bottom of huddle. They preferred to stay at the bottom of the pile, while others pile on top of them. The weaklings felt protected, loved and warm. They even felt that they could even breath collectively. The huddle went up and down, under the warmth of the light bulb.
What’s the best way to die? One wonders. Die from cold of loneliness or die under the pressure and warmth of family.

Next, day the worker remove the dead, rigor-mortised chicks from underneath the huddle and threw them in to the waste bin.

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