Reminders to Self
a letter and a playlist
Meow.
Right from where my memories begin, only one thing has never changed. I was convinced that this fact was stitched to my bones. There is no context, no explanations, no feelings that accompanied the fact. Just a stand-alone truth scrawled on every sky every shore every wall I turned to.
I am here today, free falling from nothingness to a(nother) day. So, I will stop existing. Someone has a lit a candle, so it must burn. Poof, it will go off.
It's only recently I came to know of this truth that I revolved around in words and emotions. Until then it was the ether in which I floated in from day to day. And the said candle also didn't know for long that a) there are other possibilities b) burning itself to nothingness was one of them.
At 20, I had lived for over two years in a city away from where I grew up in. There, at times I begin to suspect that I am more than a clueless helpless candle.
At times I drowned. Retreated to my blanket nest. Clothed in fear, shame, and not knowing how to ask for help and not knowing what help I needed.
However.
Love, the sneaky fucker it is, lifted pulled down crawled inside the blanket, and gently led me out. Every time.
The college I studied in then functioned out of a rented building in a government complex. It was a 10 rupees share-auto ride away from the stop closest to the rented apartments us students were housed in. A 30-rupee share-auto ride to the closest city-ish area, and a 30-rupee 45 minutes bus ride away from where you take buses to anywhere in the city. From the proxy-hostel you walk for 10 minutes to reach the main road. From there, a 10-minute bus ride to the campus.
A highway stretches from the main road junction, lined on both sides with agricultural research units and large swathes of land, some cultivated, some taken over by neglect and taken back by nature. Different shades of greens, throughout the year, flank the highway. Along with a shrine and a dargah and few burial grounds that the land acquisition drive might not have been able to evict.
Ten minutes and you reach a small junction, and a bar, couple of bakeries, chai stalls, tiffin centers, dosa bandis, messes, juice stalls, tailoring shops, recharge and phone repair stores, sugar cane juice stands, fruit and vegetable carts welcome you. On the left an arch announces the name of the most supreme (as ordained by the government) of all the institutions in the area.
Walking in through the arch, the first large iron-wrought gate on the right that waits for you after you walk under a heartful of trees takes you to the campus. One outdoor dining hall, whole of the second floor and most of the second floor and one large room on the ground floor (and later the whole floor), and a gazebo has been made up temporarily to make up a college.
I was 20 and I began to walk back from the campus to the hostel.
Hyderabad skies are dramatic and beautiful. Most dramatic and beautiful I've ever seen. Especially when the sun sets.
As I walk, the widest sky gloriously changing colors, fields of happy greens, giggling wildflowers, trembling leaves on tree branches, and branches of trees spreading out and holding hands with each other look over me. Earphones sing, soft evening breeze blows dust off the road, and a soft joy balloons in the chest. A soft joy that makes me smile and turn my eyes to stars. A smile that men on bikes and cars and autos that pass by take as an invitation to cat call, assault, or stop and ask demand “chalegi?”.
I talk to myself during the walk. Take a thousand pictures of the sky, trees and flowers overcome by a desperation to hold on to the softness rippling in my chest. I sing out loud, pick up fallen leaves and petals and bougainvillea bunches.
It was around that time when everyone was asked and talked about and thought of and worried over the future beyond their bachelor's.
Where do you go next?
What do you want to be?
Who do you want to become?
Not back to where I grew up. Anywhere but there.
Kind.
How do I be-come when I will at any time cease to exist? Poof- blown out?
I unearth more questions. I walk away and ahead and around.
I'm 27. I know of apps that can remind you to drink water.
I am yet to find an app to send me reminders asking me to live -not survive, float through ether, hide inside blanket nest, but live. And to live even when trying to survive, floating through ether and hiding inside the nest. I turn to words.
Some days my fingers dance over the keyboard, transforming the current passing me into words, and leave it in notes. Some days I transcribe my thoughts into a voice recording. Notebooks, diaries, sticky notes, the small white-board - I scribble missives to myself on whatever I can get my hands on. Thoughts race against my fingers. I type furiously on my phone, lying in the bed at night, lightly jostling between sleep and wakefulness, squinting, scared that I might lose the words if I turn to find my specs.
After crying buckets of grief and pain today, again, I clicked on the plus sign on the right bottom of the screen and summoned a blank note.
I wrote a reminder, again. An amulet.
I'm a person. I'm a person. I'm a person. I'm a person. I'm a person. I'm a person.
I'm a person. Not my trauma not my pain not my shame not my symptoms not my diagnosis not my mania not my depression not the blue and white pills that keeps me alive not the little and big failures I crucify myself over - the abandoned projects, unmet deadlines, missed out opportunities, lost relationships, the messy room, the boxes unpacked, the piles of laundry, the unwashed dishes, the windows and tabs open or bookmarked or saved in every device, the unchecked boxes in every to-do list.
I'm not what I can and do and give. I'm a person. That's who I want to be.
Tonight, that's all I want to be.
Hi there, thank you for reading.
Send some love my way - like, comment, share, subscribe, buy me a book, etc.?
And here's a (l e n g t h y) playlist that held me through the last month.
"I talk to myself during the walk. Take a thousand pictures of the sky, trees and flowers overcome by a desperation to hold on to the softness rippling in my chest."
"Some days my fingers dance over the keyboard, squinting, scared that I might lose the words if I turn to find my specs." - Loved this Paravathy -- the Hyderabad skies are a category of themselves only!
Also that amulet I'm bound to remember for a long time.
You are a person I adore. Thank you for writing :)