I Feel (Un)Pretty

Till the time I was 17, I believed that I was ugly with all my heart.
I had braces till I was 17. My hair was a mess that I didn't want to look at. I had glasses. I was (still am) super skinny. So, basically, I was a super nerd and super ugly. I felt like Betty in Ugly Betty. Except that I though Betty had scope for improvement and I didn't.

Some days, I still can't believe that some people think of me as pretty. My glasses are gone (I wear lenses), my braces got removed, my hair's manageable now (all thanks to Habib's hair saloon). But I've been thinking that I was ugly for so long that it's hard for me to think of myself any other way.

Some days I wake up and don't want to look in the mirror for the fear of what I would see in it. When I'm relaxing at home, the hair becomes a mess, the glasses come back and I feel like I'm 17 again (which is not a very happy thing for me).

But then, there are days when 2 out of 5 people I meet compliment me on something or the other. And I realized that looks aren't such a big deal. I know some really people who are really pretty. But this doesn't ensure that they're good people too. And then, sometimes, it's too much of an effort to look good, so I don't really care if people think of me as pretty or zombie. 

I think all I really need is for people to know that I can be pretty when I try. But more importantly, I'm a good person, regardless of my looks.

The Human Condition

You know, I read about Modernism and Post-Modernism modes of existence. I read Beckett, I read Lawerence, I read Marquez. And because I've read all this and known what theose authors wanted to express, I analyzed how we live today (Yeah, that's what you'll do if you take up English Honours too).

I figured that we've moved away from the Post Modern way of existence. There is no celebration of our fractured identity today. We are not happy about being broken. We, as pieces, have been scattered forever. The realization struck with Modernism. People wanted to go back to thinking that they were whole, though. They did not know how to live like an unassembled jigsaw puzzle. Post Modernists, on the other hand, celebrated this kind of existence, where we are each other- different in shape, maybe, but still the same. And that was a relief. Being same. Being like everyone else.

In these times of Post- Post Modernism, I look around me and I feel that the attitude to our existence has changed drastically. We've resigned ourselves to being broken, unassembled, scattered. But it's not a very passive acceptance. When I say resignation, a certain kind of cynicism accompanies this. We recognize that we were never whole to begin with and hope is so lacking in us now that it's turned us into first class cynics.

There is lesser belief in love, God, hope. We've sort of just given up; rolled over and surrendered ourselves to the lack of goodness, wholeness in the world. Everything is tainted by dissatisfaction and sneers, as if we can see right through everything and recognize that everything we're surrounded by is as hollow as us. There is no respite from such existence- not in nature, not in God, not in anything. If there's anything that is actually believed in, it is the vices in everything.

Self confessional style of writing emerges from this way of existence (which is not the same as living anymore. We are not alive. We don't live). With pop cultural imagery and metaphors and and brutally honest statements, expression of lack becomes a dagger to our hearts and souls. It pinches our consciousness and forces us to realize the truth of life- everything is pointless. 

And I'm the part of this Post- Post Modernist human condition and I don't believe in goodness and God. But somewhere, I wish I did.

Of Murakami and Love

So. It’s Valentine’s Day.

Today, I walked about 7 km today in total. Murakami talks about running in one of his work whose name I forgot. I even forgot what he says about running. I was trying to think up of a link between his runs and my walks but because I had abandoned the book after 50 pages, I must not have agreed with what he had to say about running.

The first time I actually recognized my desire to walk was right after when I came back from Getaway Camp in Sattal. After doing intense physical activities like playing dodgeball for what seemed like a couple of hours and trekking everyday for three days, I come back to Delhi and find that I am the least physically active person because I couldn’t find anything to do here. By the evening of my first day back here, I grew so restless that I knew I had to do something. So I went on a leisurely 5 km walk.

During that 5 km walk, I contemplated this sudden urge to do something. It might have been a change in biological clock, but my body adapts to change in schedules very quickly. Also, I have been living in this monstrous city for longer than I had been in Sattal. It should’ve been like falling back to my daily routine.

The answer was so bloody simple that I couldn’t believe it. Walking for me is cathartic. It purges all the mental stress I have, thanks to living in a city. The physical activity distracts me from my mental activities and I can sleep so much better at night.

I think everyone has something or the other that gives them such peace. And I think all of us require peace, especially because of the world we live in.

Oh, and about that Valentine’s Day comment? This is another year that went by when I was single, so I’m not going to say anything  ._.

Dilemma

My fascination with a lot of things is to do with what I don't know about them. I make this statement in the context of my recent visit to this place called Sattal. 

Sattal left me with a feeling that I should've realized something, but I was leaving the place when I recognized that I have failed to realize that thing. I have no idea about the nature of what I should've realized but I know that there is something rankling in my brain, waiting for the right slot to fit into. However, there is no imposition upon me to find that slot for the rankling piece. I just feel like I was this close to knowing something, and before I could, I had to leave.

This mystified something is calling me back to that place. I've heard people say that the mountains call to them. One of my friends says that what I feel isn't unusual. Mountains do that to you. You feel like you will find something about yourself and the world. 

I have no idea about how true it is and if there are answers to my in-articulated questions. Nature is so much bigger than us. 

We are mere humans. How can we expect to unravel all the secrets of nature that might culminate into answers to our mute question? Is my coming back to Sattal to look for answers a fruitless exercise?

Even if I don't find answers to my questions there, I'd still like to go back. You can't marvel over the enormosity of nature in the cities, where the concrete jungles do nothing but suffocate you. You can't realize how small you actually are because in the cities, you've built everything according to your size.

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My fascination with a lot of things has to do with what I do know about them. For instance, I feel that sunsets are better in the cities than in the mountains. There is nothing mystical about the sunset for me. Sunsets signify the end of a day without the certainty of the other. And this uncertainty can exist only in the cities, because they are representative of the human condition of mortality.

 I never felt the sunset in Sattal. Every evening brought with itself the promise of a new day. 

I'd like to go back again for a lot of reasons. But the main reason why I'd want to go back to Sattal is because it promises me something that I do not have here- anonymity, and by extension, immortality.

PS- This picture is clicked by me.

Winter Smiles and Woes

Let me start with the woes (because they came first :P)

About a month ago, I met up with a friend and he asked me for ideas for torture methods for his latest novel. So I thought about what would cause the most excruciating pain. I gave him an answer about two weeks late but the torture method I suggested could scare the living daylights out of the minds of the writers of Criminal Minds. Anyway, I have always known that toes and feet are a sensitive and important and sensitive parts of the human body. It is only this week I realized how sensitive ._.

My feet are mildly frostbitten. What with the temperature dropping to 1.6 degrees here and my feet lacking proper blood circulation, it seems obvious that I'd get frostbitten. But Merlin, this realization doesn't make the mild frostbite any better. My feet itched and hurt so bad that it was almost impossible to walk. I know how I spent three days hobbling around, waking up in the middle of the night because it itched and hurt so bad. But the worst part wasn't the hurt. It was the itch. I couldn't scratch my toes because they were red and blue and swollen and scratching would only make the itch worse. And the level of frustration I had to face was astounding. The itch would go on for hours and I would be on the verge of tears because I didn't know how to make it better. Until the day before yesterday, I didn't know my feet were frostbitten either. Frostbite is the worst kind of torture there is. There is barely anything worse than this. I contemplated ripping out my toes, you know. And to be truthful, that would have been less painful than the itch. Thankfully, before it could come to  that, I saw the sweet doctor (bless his soul) and he gave me medicines for the itching and the pain and assured me that it'll be okay in a week T_T

I had gone for a play called 'Maybe This Summer' last week, until last week, I hadn't seen a good play, you know. If the acting and execution was good, there would be some problem with the script and vice versa. So after I came out of the auditorium after watching 'Maybe This Summer', I said, "I wish I could see a play in which everything's perfect." So apparently, some deity or the other listened to me. Yesterday, I was feeling better as compared to the previous few days. I had made plans to see a play called 'Metamorphoses' with my friends. 'Metamorphoses' was a myth about myths. It is unbelievable until you see it. It basically took from Ovid's 'Metamorphosis'. The play adapted and enacted nine myths from Ovid's works. The actors were absolutely splendid. The spectators were drawn into the play as the whole auditorium was the stage for the actors. The myth that I thought was best enacted was the myth of Erysichthon, a Thessalian king who chopped down the sacred grove of Demeter and was cursed with hunger till he devoured himself. The thing I liked the most about it was when Hunger crawled onto the raised platform in the auditorium to Erysichthon and jumped him. There was a ten second choreography between Erysichthon and Hunger which depicts Hunger devouring the king sensually. I almost had a nosebleed.

Despite my mildly frostbitten toes (and I'm going to deny this if, Merlin forbid, the itching starts again) but I think 'Metamorphoses' made up for my absolutely shitty week.

Till next time, guys! :D

PS- The photos haven't been clicked by me. I take them off the net :P

The Case of 'Damini'

There has been a lot of hype in my country about a recent rape case. Apparently, a girl got raped in a moving bus at 8:30 pm by 6 men. One of them was the bus driver, I think. They made her boyfriend watch her get raped. And she got raped very brutally. As in, they wrenched out her uterus and threw it on the road. She died.

The point of this blog is not to sympathize with the girl (although I do). This blog is about the reaction of the people, rape as a problem and possible solutions to it.

In a country like India, there are too many rapes to keep count of and most of them don't even get reported. This case struck out because it took place in the capital. If it had been in a village, no one would have even known about it, and they wouldn't have lined up in front of a  national monument to avenge the rural victim. I understand that this is because of the lack of awareness of the cases. If people were more aware of the rapes happening around them (especially in rural areas where violence is statistically higher), they'd protest more. But the fact is, stuff like this keeps happening. And the public doesn't even know half the cases. I'm outraged at the extreme reaction of the public to this case, when there are cases similar to this that keep happening in some corner of the country or the other. People have concentrated on this case so much that they don't see anything apart from the punishment for those 6 men. They don't realize that there are  6 million more like them in the country. In an attempt to get justice for the girl, they are ignoring the larger picture of the rapes that happen in the country. 

I would like to make myself clear- I do not, in any way, support the rapists. Having said that, I do think that the public is ridiculous in its demand to castrate/hang the rapists. What good will it do? How will the girl be at peace if her rapists were killed but there were many more roaming around, looking for victims like her?

Instead of thinking rashly, we must realize a few things. And on top of the list is a fact that RAPE IS NOT ABOUT GENDERED VIOLENCE. RAPE IS ABOUT DOMINANCE. I don't understand how anyone can think that people rape exclusively because they're sexually frustrated. That might be true for some deranged cases, but most of the time, raping someone is about feeling powerful. Violating someone gives the rapist a sense of power that might be missing from the rapist's real life. Why do you think most rapists belong to lower classes? They don't have power in their social, political and economic lives. So, they achieve a sense of power missing from their lives by raping people. And honestly,I don't exactly blame them. Who knows- if I was in their position, I might do the same. 

Let's not deceive ourselves here. All of us lust for power in one form or the other. All of us crave subjects to our power. It is actually visible in all kind of structures that exist. For example, your job. Being promoted gives you a sense of elation because you're moving up on the ladder. This means you have more subjects to control and exercise your power on. It makes you feel superior and it feeds your self esteem/ego. But we must think about the subjects too. What about the people who don't have this power in any aspect of their lives? Obviously, this lust for power then manifests in them sexually because they can't have it in any other aspect of their lives. And that's how rape comes into the picture.

Because rape is about power, it becomes a social problem rather than one of law and order. It's not exactly the State's fault if everyone's power hungry, is it? It's a problem that we as a society have to tackle. So, there are two ways we can go from here- not be power hungry or create opportunities so that every person can feel empowered in at least one of the non sexual aspects of their lives. I don't think the former is very likely, but we can brainstorm and try to make the latter possible. 

It won't matter if you get rapists hung or have them castrated or put them under surveillance. It's not going to make a change in the society. The time is past when people could be disciplined by example. We have evolved and none of the old methods of bringing about a change will work now. Unless we can actually see the bigger picture, we will continue to stick to the demands of hanging/castration and blaming the government. And I assure you- in the long run, all these accusations and demands will lead us nowhere. Hanging/castration are immediate and shallow solutions to a problem that is much bigger in nature. If we have to eradicate rape as a problem, we need to pull it out from its roots and not just trim it.

A Bittersweet Goodbye

Standing on my toes,

Eyes closed,

Touching your lips for the last time.

I hate to say goodbye to you.

I hate to let us walk away.

From the hello,

That I’ve known you.

To this good-bye

We have to say.

The hardest thing

I’ve ever done- 

Is being forced to walk different ways.

Drowning in tears,

Can’t see what’s ahead.

The dreams we knit were beautiful,

The reality begged to differ.

Promises were forced to break,

The tinkling eyes,

And the sad smile.

Holding hands-

Till the time we had.

Watching the train,

Pull in- to way.

Holding each other-

Tolling for the time we had.

Slowly his face disappears,

As he follows my train.

Will we meet again,

Will this waiting ever end?

Going to two different parts of life,

From sharing just one.

Will in the future,

Our lives, intervene?

Will the love rekindle-

And remember its glory?

Will the time bring me-

What was always mine?

Swati Jain