Festival season blues

It's been a very tough 2018.

            For once I did not eat and sleep and Facebook for a life. I tried SOFT SKILLS and found no takers, I even got bold into sinking my last rupee being a FOOD CATERER, also met a venture capitalist for PUBLISHING a neighbourhood weekly. None of them took off the ground; the plane ran out of fuel on the runaway. Then came the DUBAI fiasco immediately followed by DELHI comedy (I am glad that I spent a week in Delhi to realize that my health is so gone down the drain that I cannot work anywhere but Chennai and the GULF).

            TH Iyer mama is in Bangalore for a month and I stopped walking. Earlier I used to be a regular at Eliot’s Beach for a bit of his company. There are many “nodding friends or even good morning” ones but I don’t want to aggravate my tendons already crying for attention. Yesterday was Ganesh Chaturthi and I spent the whole day cursing my siblings.

            Miraculously I fell into a slumber in the afternoon (there is no miracle sleeping in the afternoon but the movie that ran in the head was certainly one hell of a miracle) and the mind played this movie so graphic and vivid that I finally get it. I ask myself so often, “Why is my life is so often grounded for years? “ I use the word “flotsam” to describe it which is a piece of junk that is tossed about from the shore and sea repeatedly; the fuckin thing never settles either on water or land.

            In my nightmare my sister promises me to take me to some vacation. Then she sneaks away leaving me to my mother. We are having a huge war of words that has descended to blows. I see a wet vestti that was being washed; the second sibling turning in unexpectedly. Then after an hour I still see the cloth at the taps; I get infuriated beyond reason and turn into a devil. Suddenly I turn on my mother like a hound and we are tearing each other apart. I wake up and then I am shocked at the vehemence of the hate. Then I finally get it: Why is my life stranded and going nowhere? I had a mother who single-handedly drove me to the sand. If she had her way, I would have either gone to an asylum or a grave. She certainly wished my death repeatedly; my mother is more than capable of murdering me for she thinks I am the villain of her life. In truth, she did everything to SINGE the mind of a two year old ME.

            I reflect on my school years. I am a Science graduate and never understood even the IIT JEE question paper. Only now I can crack those pulley problems finally getting the vector concept. Meaning, even my studies were severely affected. If I had a normal parent, I am sure I could have been a physicist or something like that at IIT. It was HATE that drove me into shaping as a wordsmith; it was as though nature was determined to make an ass of me. No child on earth deserves such a mother; it would have been kindness had she wriggled my neck and cremated me as a child than put me through the gas chambers of hate and regular supplies of “ayyos”.

            It was this blueprint nature gave me in life. From there the rest of tale makes sense. Both my siblings were also affected by poor parents. Viji had a normal childhood for she was raised more by a normal grandmother; Latha suffered a lot but she found her saviour in marriage while I never found anchor. The Sindhi came and went; she was one person who gave me peace and love for a while and to my horror it was short-lived and phoney.

            I am a man who has walked on oceans to reach where I am today. Anyone in my shoes would have probably become a criminal or drowned in the sea in a long time. Even I don’t give myself better odds. I will blast myself probably or most certainly in the next five years. It’s an innings I am intensely proud off. Frankly I have not seen any hero outside of myself in real life or in novels. My mother was so sick that it’s a wonder and a miracle that I am so sane today.

            I am a saint in temperament. I don’t mind being mocked or taunted. I am so used to failures that I am genuinely surprised when anything nice happens to me which is rare by the way.  There were moments when I jumped with joy – like getting my first creative writing job and that too in Times of India in 2007, to being invited to Delhi last month for a job hunting by a IMT alumnus.

            My days are done. I hold my head high but I am past the expiry date much like a drug on the store. There is no tailwind anywhere near the horizon. There is no last minute twist in the tale. There is no woman waiting to fall in embrace and kisses. There is no hidden treasure in terms of a career straightening itself. I was gone long back, now I realize.

            We don’t reach a premise on rational basis; I got this perspicuity on that slumber. You don’t see your life situation as in a Xray through deduction; you feel in your bones and the last atom of your tissues that's were we live and die each moment intuitively as I saw in those images . One raging, mad woman fell me, hacked me, and uprooted me. On the other hand, she was verily the cause for my growth and maturity but on balance I am finally done. Each year I die a thousand deaths between SEPTEMBER and NOVEMBER when the Hindu calendar ticks off a Ganesh Chaturthi, Dusherra and Diwali and it is a very very poor life on earth not to have celebrated one festive moment in 3 decades; now tell me was a Rambo or Rocky that strong???  I feel nothing but a stream of love and compassion for this child that was forsaken; now verily the last act remains to be played out. 
Post Script: Blasting your head is always there but I must have some strategy to add people and events in my very EMPTY life. There is a "negativity bias" of the mind (with a specific definition in Mindfulness literature) and so I must go on daily walks, attend Swamiji's  weekend lectures even if I have passed that stage of development, exercise before going to bed (these nightmares are real). I am sick and tired of M-90 and more than ever wish to DISPOSE it and go to a new place. I am too COMFORTABLE with my loneliness here; change of scene can only be to the better. Get some gardening it; add new strings to the guitar; or even good old Rudram or Gita chanting there are so many ways for the mind to uplift itself. Try and try, death is always there but for the moment let me still hang on.