He walks.. I watch

I watched him walk towards me today

Feet splayed

Arms akimbo

Balancing carefully on the bricks of the lane leading home

Slow but sure

Not needing a hand to hold him steady

Watching each brick under his feet

And then watching me watch him walk

The slight frown on my face as I watch each careful shuffling step

The stubborn look in his eyes that says

I don’t need a mommy to hold my hand as I walk

Looking up and to the side as a bird flips past

As I wait

Hoping that the uneven bricks and the slush left behind by the rain doesn’t trip him up

Making sure that he sees the little bit of mud right outside the door

so he doesn’t get his shoes muddy

I watch,

worried but proud

Much as he must have watched me take my first steps as a toddler

My grandpa

The 95 year old who still won’t carry a stick

Labels are a BITCH

Labels are an odd thing..

A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose…

Sure

But what happens when a Rose is told that it is nothing special but simply a member of a large family of the genus rosacea?

Does that not detract from THE thing that is a Red Rose in Full Bloom and reduce it to a “just a rose”?

I had a shitty relationship.. I was a fool in love with an ass who didn’t respect me.. I took everything he dished out for years and still loved him, fought with him, stayed with him... till I finally had enough and told him to fuck off…

That was my reality. I was an idiot in love as a teenager who let that idiocy define years of her adulthood too..

That was me. ME. As the actor who chose to behave in a certain manner and CHOSE to be  a certain way..

But now the label has been changed

Ironically by the same Ass who I told to fuck off from my life

The AB’s back in town for a flying visit.. and has recently been sitting through some seminars on domestic violence and abuse..

So he decided to assuage his guilty conscience and come to me to APOLOGISE for the emotional, mental and sexual abuse he put me through during our relationship....

A relationship that ended 7 years ago.. one that scarred me so badly that I’ve only recently  begun healing..

He came to APOLOGISE… 

and in the process took away my agency, my choice, MY decisions..

I was an Idiot in love with an ass

I’m now a Victim... a survivor of domestic violence whose abuser came back to apologise for his behaviour..

I’m no longer the person who made the wrong choices.. I’m a victim who  “suffered through abuse”

Who was this apology for anyway??

I was okay with my original label.. I was okay being the idiot who made bad relationship choices.. I was OKAY

Now I’m not

Now I find myself reliving everything about the years of our relationship.. wondering which part was my choice, where was it that I had the agency to do something but chose not to, and where were the parts where I could have done nothing…

isn't there some rule when it comes to shit like this that it should be the so called Victim who should ask for and lead the confrontation with the abuser and then walk away after receiving an apology feeling bolstered and vindicated???

i now feel more violated than i ever felt during the worst parts of our relationship... back then i was Choosing whether or not to pick a fight.. i was choosing to react or not react.. or maybe overreact if i felt emotionally wrought enough.. it was MY CHOICE

or so i believed..

now the apology has been given to me.. has been thrust at me really.. and i'm writing about it days after the fact, still dazed at what happened.. 

i didn't really react in front of him.. just gave him a polite hearing and said Okay.....and i let him go.. 

i wrote to him the next day.. with a long list of things that i REMEMBER hurting me.. asking whether he acknowledges and apologises for all of them..

got a reply saying. i apologise for all the things you've listed and things you've not...

and now i'm spiralling in my own head wondering what other abuse have I suffered that i didn't even KNOW was abusive behaviour??

labels are a BITCH i tell you

i fear oblivion.. i fear it like the proverbial blind man who is afraid of the dark....

I just finished reading "The Fault in our Stars' by John Green.. maybe its he inherent selfishness in me, but the words that touched me the most in this beautifully written tale of pain and love is the quote from the "book" Hazel and Augustus fall in love with...'The Imperial Affliction'..

"There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. there was a time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be a time after. and if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does."

 I too fear oblivion sometimes.. have to wonder if anyone at all will remember me when  i no longer exist, whether my existence in this world has changed anything for anyone anywhere, even if only as the proverbial flutter of the distant butterfly wing, the first, minuscule domino... And then there are times when i wonder if anyone will remember me the "right" way... and not just in the superficial way of people who brush past you in life and yet think they have touched enough of your essence to claim that they KNOW you..
.
.
.
.
and after reading this book, i wonder if there has ever been any moment in time, or will ever be such a moment that my existence, or someone's existence in my vicinity, has changed life so indelibly that whatever short time we have left in the world will forever MEAN something simply because you have had some time where you really lived and loved and your life wasn't just the endless flow of days but time paused and you really KNEW that you were on the cusp of having an experience that will change you....
.
.
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I will write you a sequel.. finish the unfinished story that means peace to you... 

I am not a kitchen appliance.. Awesome Ads by Havells

So for some reason my laptop is refusing to let me embed You tube videos on the same post as text... still.. if you have seen the prev post, you know exactly what i'm talking about..
Havell's has come out with this awesome series of ads regarding various household appliances, with the underlying theme that your wife/partner/mother is NOT an appliance, and everyone in the family can make their own damned coffee/juice/chutneys.. and men can iron their own shirts.. i really adored the "istree- stree" and "I'm his wife, he thinks i'm a kitchen appliance" punchlines..

but my favorite BY FAR is the arranged marriage ad where the guy's mother is going on about how her poor son is deprived of decent coffee at home living alone in a foreign country.. and the girl hands him a coffee maker instead..
seriously.. why the the hallmark of a 'good wife' a "cook-maid-waiter- in one'?? why is a girl in this arranged marriage market judged on her ability to handle the kitchen and want to have children? can anyone ask if the guy can handle half the cooking/cleaning/random chores like a partner should?

this is the age of technology.. make your own damned coffee

kya hai na auntiji... I am not a kitchen appliance.

have you ever felt connected mentally to someone without liking them in the slightest?

Blest be the tie that binds
our hearts in kindred something- or- other.
said Tommy Dukes. "I'd like to know what the tie is... the tie that binds us just now is mental friction on one another. And, apart from that, there's damned little tie between us. We bust apart, and say spiteful things about one another, like all other damned intellectuals in the world. Damned everybodies, as far as that goes, for they all do it. Else we bust apart, and cover up the spiteful things we feel against one another by saying false sugaries. it's a curious thing that mental life seems to flourish with its roots in spite, ineffable and fathomless spite.....

no, there is something wrong with the mental life, radically.



- DH Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover. 

Jalal ad din Mohammad Rumi...

sometimes the words that others have said long ago resonate in your soul so well that you don't need to think anymore...



The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you
Don't go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don't go back to sleep!”


“You try to be faithful
And sometimes you're cruel.
You are mine. Then, you leave.
Without you, I can't cope.

And when you take the lead,
I become your footstep.
Your absence leaves a void.
Without you, I can't cope.

You have disturbed my sleep,
You have wrecked my image.
You have set me apart.
Without you, I can't cope.”

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”


The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.”


“When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.
Praise God for those two insomnias!
And the difference between them.”

“I want to see you.

Know your voice.

Recognize you when you
first come 'round the corner.

Sense your scent when I come
into a room you've just left.

Know the lift of your heel,
the glide of your foot.

Become familiar with the way
you purse your lips
then let them part,
just the slightest bit,
when I lean in to your space
and kiss you.

I want to know the joy
of how you whisper
"more”

“Do not leave me,
hide in my heart like a secret,
wind around my head like a turban.
"I come and go as I please,"
you say, "swift as a heartbeat."
You can tease me as much as you like
but never leave me.”

“Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make sense any more.”

Because I cannot sleep- Jalauddin Rumi

Because I cannot sleep

Because I cannot sleep
I make music at night.
I am troubled by the one
whose face has the color of spring flowers.
I have neither sleep nor patience,
neither a good reputation nor disgrace.
A thousand robes of wisdom are gone.
All my good manners have moved a thousand miles away.
The heart and the mind are left angry with each other.
The stars and the moon are envious of each other.
Because of this alienation the physical universe
is getting tighter and tighter.
The moon says, 'How long will I remain
suspended without a sun?'
Without Love's jewel inside of me,
let the bazaar of my existence be destroyed stone by stone.
O Love, You who have been called by a thousand names,
You who know how to pour the wine
into the chalice of the body,
You who give culture to a thousand cultures,
You who are faceless but have a thousand faces,
O Love, You who shape the faces
of Turks, Europeans, and Zanzibaris,
give me a glass from Your bottle,
or a handful of being from Your Branch.
Remove the cork once more.
Then we'll see a thousand chiefs prostrate themselves,
and a circle of ecstatic troubadours will play.
Then the addict will be freed of craving.
and will be resurrected,
and stand in awe till Judgement Day.