A Bowl of Elusive

WARNING: Those who were bummed out by my depressing article "Just Another Day in Life" might find this article even more demure. That's because it is. But it is a topic I needed to write about. So here goes nothing. Being a child born in a country which is as densely populated as India just multiplies your chances of being sexually abused. In fact, I believe that as much as 95% of kids today face some form of sexual abuse or the other. Do you want to know why I am assuming such a huge percentage? That's because most of my peers who felt comfortable enough with me to share their woes, told me that it had happened to them. In some cases, it was just some neighbor "uncle" touching them inappropriately and in other cases, it was more horrid than that. A girl I knew had confessed to having been raped between the age of six to nine by five different men, most of whom were either related to her or were close family friends. I myself faced abuse at the h...

I have been away for weeks. I just couldn't get myself to type a word. Have been battling with some inner demons. And the thing is, I don't think I am winning. I am stressed out all the time. Things around me just seem to be getting worse. There is just so many things in my life that seem to be spiraling out of control. Take my job for example. As usual, I am doing all I can to perform well, but nothing seems to make the bosses happy.  There's a restructuring going on in the company's operations in my territory and I am having a hard time dealing with the new people I am coming across. They might not be hostile but a few of them are strangely wily. They just keep speaking in riddles and ridicules. My girlfriend tells me that it is an issue with me, that I am letting them mess with my head. I just don't know how not to. I am a straight-forward guy. I don't understand taunts and back-handed comments. And most of all, I am bad at shutting people up. I j...

Just the other night, I had this weird little dream. I was on a family vacation with my father. He looked young as he always used to and I was my present age. As it usually is with dreams, you tend to forget the details. So I am having hard time remembering where we were. All I remember is that there was water in the background and I was trying to make my father pose with me for a selfie. After several attempts I got it right. And I remember feeling in my dream that this selfie was really special, even though I couldn't figure out why. Frankly, I am not a big fan of selfies anymore. It wasn't until I woke up from the dream that I realized why that selfie was so special. My father has been dead for sixteen years and that picture could never exist. It was a strange feeling dreaming about him. I know this must sound like a very silly thing to write about.  But there was something about how I felt in the dream. A kind of serenity that I haven't felt in years. My...

I am not the man of your dreams. I am not the man of any girl's dream for that matter. I was just browsing my FB wall and I came across the picture of a cousin with her husband, where she is singing and her hubby is playing the guitar and I thought to myself, "These guys are such a well-suited match." And that reminded me of the several times my girlfriend wanted to do something that I wasn't really into. Like visit a local monument or go furniture shopping. Hence, the realization. I am a rather boring person who isn't interested in a lot of things. I spend a crazy amount of time being stressed out about my job. Very few things actually make me happy and lately, I have been becoming more anti-social than ever. My pessimism has helped me cultivate a somewhat practical approach that's required for my job but other than that, it has affected all other aspects of my life negatively. I have traced the source of all my cynicism back to my college days. T...

I was born at the Air Force base in Chandigarh. My father left the force a couple of years after my birth and we moved around the country while he worked various jobs. Then after he died, I came to live with my grandparents in my hometown. I was ten years old. By this time, I had formed a somewhat confused identity due to all the places I’d lived in, and putting down roots seemed a little difficult. I would constantly feel like an outsider. I spoke my native tongue like I spoke my second and third languages, clearly but maybe “too clearly for a local guy”. And this affected the way I was perceived in school. People found me weird, I guess, however much I tried to seem normal. It was tough to make friends. I went to a lot of trouble initially to make people happy in the hope of securing their friendship in return. But I soon realized that they just thought I was being too needy. So, I stopped trying so hard. I stopped trying like 15 years ago. And that shaped my personality f...

I am a little surprised at the things that are happening in the country today. Controversies are like a dime a dozen. All of us have established a set of people that we end up blaming for whatever we aren't okay with. And life goes on. In such political instability, I often ask myself questions regarding patriotism. Am I a patriot? I really don't think so. Please hear me out before you chew my head off for this statement. If we agree that Shaheed Bhagat Singh and Netaji were patriots, then we must accept that you and I are not. Our times are different from theirs and so are our motivations. I wake up every morning and the first thing I do is worry about my day. I think about how to get through the various struggles that come up due to my work. I worry about my salary, my bills, due dates, taxes and providing for my household. What I don't worry about is whether Aamir Khan’s statement is justified or not. I don't worry about whether my neighbour is a ...

I met her 14 years ago. I used to be a wide-eyed optimistic pre-teen back then. My grandfather was driving me to her place. I was supposed to borrow notes from her. Being 11, I had never had a girlfriend. So I kind of psyched myself up to believe that "I'll make her my girl". Positive visualization, I guess. And this was even before we actually met. Then we did. She was a girl. Looked a little older for her age, she had curly hair like mine and I'd noticed none of that back then. Because she was a girl and I was too busy trying to turn my "charm" on. God, it's been so long. Now I don't even remember where that "charm" lies. Anyway, my trick must have worked. We clicked. Even before her giggling friends inadvertently let me know that she was into me, we were spending quite a bit of time with each other. I had chalked it up to the fact that we had a lot in common in terms of background and habits. Then I found out that she lik...