the answer key

call me selfish
go ahead.. i won't mind..
maybe i am.. maybe i am a self centered child with atrocious people skills and even worse people reading skills..
so bloody what?
I am ME. I may become better, more caring, more understanding, more mature..
but guess what
at the end of the day... when i have had a long day and feel like kissing my pillow to show it just how much i missed it and need it, i WILL choose my sanity, my sleep and MYcomfort over whatever the fuck it may be that's going on in the world.

so i admit it
i am a selfish hypocrite

but damn it.. my pillow is the most important person to me at bloody midnight after a 14 hour mindfuck of a workday. maybe i'd care for music or a short conversation with friends or family about some random topic.. but i REFUSE to think of important things when all that my brain and body can say is SHUT UP AND SLEEP!

it may be the most important thing in the world..
but frankly my dear.. i don't give a damn

and i refuse to apologise for it. 

sometimes the silliest songs can be so profound..

a journalist's confession....

I joined this profession with a starry eyed idealistic dream of "doing good".... that as a reporter, what i print will bring justice to people, that i will help someone somehow by putting their story out to the world... then i was told that emotion and ideals have no place and a reporter must be objective and report the 'truth'

the problem is, that there are truths aren't absolute, they're layered.. what is true in one context may be untrue from a different point of view.. trouble is that a view that WE put out then takes the place of 'accepted truth', and edges out what the other conceptions may have been...

it has been said always that history is written by the victor.. whoever holds the pen controls what is told to the world and therefore accepted as the 'truth'. but what if the "Truth" has many many more layers than the 'truth' does?

where does one draw the line between the 'official written word' and one's own misgivings?? a story that I have written today is something that i was questioning while i was writing it..i knew there had to be more sides to the story, that the court has taken a decision which might not be teh correct one, but My personal misgivings have no place in a newspaper.. so i tamped down on my misgivings because it was all there is Black and white with a judicial stamp on it... the story is not in the black and white, the story is in the multi hued spectrum that the black and white is made of... but i chose to write the black and white, ignoring the fact that even in a court of law, black and white are not the only colours...

the worst thing is, professionally and legally speaking, what i have written is correct. There is NO factual error in my story, whatever i have written is what a court of law has noted in its duly stamped judgment... there is no way anyone can fault me, professionally speaking, for the story that i have done.. maybe i could have dug a little more, made the story just a little bit more rounded, but it wasn't professionally wrong of me to go by what the court has ordered... court reporters don't always take the other side's opinion once the court pronounces its judgment.. once its in black and white, its there, till a different court overturns the judgment...

its my heart and my soul that KNOWS there is more to this story.. and that i should have tried to get that 'more' before mechanically going ahead and writing the story... that I am at fault for simply opting for the comfort of going by the 'official' word and ignoring the questions that my own conscience raised... there is someone who was exploited.. even if one type of exploitation was  not there, there are others which have now been dismissed... i could have written about those, but since the court dismissed everything, i didn't write it either... legally my choice of focus is correct, i make no apologies for writing the story that i did.. but morally, i should have found some way of writing what the court chose to dismiss..

to the person this judgment affects most directly.... I am sorry. I will try and put your side of the story out in the world too..

"If you leave who will prove that my cry existed?/ Tell me what was I like before I existed.

yes i am selfish and spoilt.. i am, really... because while the world is talking about crimes against women and people are working their asses off all over the city, i'm wrapped up in a little bubble of mourning and memories...

in the past one month, i've lost three people who spent nearly my entire childhood pampering me, who were there in the background and foreground, often scolding my parents for scolding me, or hiding me when i wanted to escape the world... my grandmom, almost-surrogate- grandmom, and my Taiji- surrogate mom.
between the three of them, they can string together every step of my life from when i started talking to now when i stepped away and only returned to them when i needed a break from life.. even at age 24, i would cuddle up to taiji and ask amma to tell me the same stories that she's been entertaining me with since childhood.. i would visit damma and have her smile at me like i've made her day...
they were the people who all the news about life HAD to go to... they were the people who would scold me for working too much and eating too little and not having enough time to just be their little girl again...
They are the ones who remember little milestones and bumps from my childhood. stories like what i did with some long forgotten toy and the tantrum i threw about a shoe or the way i had to cajoled into eating something..
They knew my childhood, they knew the brat before i became I with an identity and a belief system.. they were the ones whose stories and admonitions and love and PRESENCE helped shape  me into who i am now.. my parents both worked, and they were there all day with me..

and now the witnesses to my childhood are gone...
Amma passed away on December 3, Damma on 15th, and Taiji on january 4...
i like to think that all three of them are now sitting in a sunny balcony up in heaven, drinking cupfuls of tea and  chatting about things just like they used to when i was a child running around with ati and akku....

goodbye...

I was a spoilt, pampered child.. as much as i may whine about growing up taking care of teh brats, the truth is that i never lifted a finger till well into my teenage, and i was the only child at home long enough to be pampered silly... i've done stuff like listen to stories all afternoon and all evening and have 'favorite' soaps brought from the market before i'd consent to bathe, and 'run away' from home because mom scolded me for something and LOVED to put my head in someone's lap and be stroked to sleep...

and now the people who spoilt me the most are gone.. Babji, Amma, and now Taiji... the people who pampered me enough for my parents to complain, the ones who told me i was the most beautiful princess in all the world and they loved me...

And i thank god on bended knee that they went before having to suffer too much pain...

Taiji, i wish our last conversation could have been happier.. i love you.. 

nirbhaya

Sing with me, sing for the years
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears
Sing with me, just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good lord will take you away...
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the songs says 'dream on'
i hear something completely different..
I can see them, hear them.. the don't expect me survive, but they're terrified to let me die.. I am too stubborn to let go... the world will erupt in flames if i do, don't you know..

My heart gave out twice, they pumped it back on, my body has been torn to shreds, by the monsters who my champions are out to kill, and a little bit by the healers in their quest to sew me back together again and defy god...

They were out on the streets fighting for me just yesterday, those who stood by and watched as i bled out, almost to the point of dying... they've adopted me as their new inspiration.. I am 'Nirbhaya" the fearless one, their "amanat.' their legacy..

 i am the image that they have of a fighter who will live despite everyone wishing for her death, despite how badly those wolves tore my body... Now new wolves are out hunting my scent.. they are the ones who will lick up teh spilled blood from the streets and feed their war machines with it. the propaganda will go out, loud and strong.. there will be proud men in prouder uniforms, telling the world that they fought off the monsters, they made the world safe for me and my sisters, so that when i finally do leave this world, my fighters won't set them on fire..

I can hear them chanting outside my window.. those who 'fight for me'.. they don't care that the didn't bother to raise their voice before mine was destroyed. they don't care that the wolves they fight lurk amongst them, they don't notice the tattered wool that clings to the wolves they see as sheep.. they even ignore the screams of my sisters who are being snatched away by different bands of wolves even as they continue their chants for my good health...

I do dream you know... i still live.. i dream of a day that i went out with a friend, had a fun evening, and went back to my parents unmolested.. i dream of a day that i walked across a road to my sister without the laughter of a hyena or the growl of a wolf behind my back.. i dream of a time when they would fight off the wolves and not sit back and watch as they tore at me, encouraging them with their indifference and their contempt for 'my kind'. i dream of setting up and walking and talking and acting like a human being.. i dream of being treated like a thinking, feeling, LIVING human being with the right to travel within my city without their eyes following me in the darkness..


and i dream on... till that dream comes true...