to the world at large

It's probably been said before, but if it helps, I'll say it again.

I stood on Monday, candle in hand, fire in heart, thinking one single thing What can I do?

I hate being useless and the past four months and these senseless acts of cowardly violence makes me so mad that if faced with a perpetrator I may not show mercy. I want them gutted and bled and burnt and terrible things to haunt their minds, but that I realise is not the best answer. I've been told to live as normal, to show that i'm not scared, but since I never was that's fruitless advice.

So I'm asking, with the utmost sincerity (and at the cost of sounding ridiculously cheesy) and putting it here so I never forget myself. I want a special gift for my 19th birthday, from all of you...

ONE RANDOM ACT OF KINDNESS

at least, I'd like more but one would be enough, you all are brilliant human beings anyways, but for my sake do something...

 there has been a lot of crap put out in the world, a lot of bad hurtful feelings and people are tense and horrible and busy and lying cheating idiots. But for my sake, give me a gift, and indulge in a spectacular random act of kindness, and once that's over... if you have time, do another one... Don't think about it, don't think about what who will think, just do something, help someone...anyone... 

On my part, in exchange of this, I promise to do the same, a sort of return gift...

Please, from the child in me to you guys, I want something special, please please please can I have it?

Dost chaha tha...

आवाज़
दिल से उठती हुई
मगर होटों पे आकर रूकती हुई
कदम तुम्हारी तरफ बद्ठे हुए
कुछ बहके, कुछ सुलझे हुए,
सब कुछ आके ठहर जाता है तुम्हारे पास
दोस्त चाहा था, तुम मिले,
अब प्यार...

one of my fav poems from a bizzare movie...

Goodbyes

I have rushed through two goodbyes today with two different set of people. I say rushed becasue I was late to both and both (at least to me) finished too fast, never mind one lasted about three hours.
I hate saying goodbye... more so than most people. I'm not bad at looking foward but I keep glancing back to make sure I didn't forget.
My school class I'm now slightly more detached to, it was a gang of girls from whom I'd been slowly seperating even when I was with them but still I got a visible lump in my throat when I walked away from them... I still want to walk into a class with them, simply because that's how it was and a class full of strange people doesn't look so nice now. But I must confess however much I adore the girls... it's not that scary to say goodbye, I'll stay in touch, vaguely.
The second one was considerably much worse... If you measure in real time I must have spent more time in school than I spent with my tution gang but... as we all agreed, it just couldn't be one year and some months ago that we'd met. Nah... we've been friends for ages....
These guys and they were mostly guys ,other than aastha of course, were well "my guys" for more than a year. I've discussed too much Atif Aslam, fantasy fiction, tie colours and life plans with them to walk away light hearted. I've slept on their shoulders, teased them, chased them, mothered them, flirted with them and loved them until I've gotten hell possesive. I have ,as one of them keeps teasing me, "mother wolf" tendencies for all of them. Two of them I'll unhesitantly call as my best friends, one of which I also call mine. They've watched me survive, they've witnessed me live and they've taken me in and... I can't be more thankful. I can't not wonder over and over again how they could have stood with me for as long as they have... I still have to say proper goodbyes to my two best friends but hell it feels strange...
We can't go back to Priya's again, it'll feel too awkward to go to the मातृभूमि without all of them. We can't not walk through there again without feeling that somebody is missing. I can never walk back there without at least one of them by my side. I chased someone across the complex... I've made someone do sit-ups in front of the cinema, I've sat for hours in Nirula's, I've ordered too many orders of ice-cream and shakes, I've... I've just done too much there.
To the guys who won't stumble here... I'll miss you like hell.

Confessions to my boyos 4

The mistake.
You were the most idiotic mistake I ever made. The first time I saw you, my eyes caught your face through tears. It was a nice face, I've admitted so much before, but I was more caught up with being alone, without friends, without love to care much about it. Later that week when I heard what school you were from I stopped all interest. The jerk was from your school, I wasn't so dumb as to pursue another one.
Much later, I found you and another classmate in the library. By now I was famous throughout class, I had made it so. I was loud-mouthed and as one of my friends loves to call it "bindaas". I was faking bravery and enjoying it. We all talked that day and from then on. I stuck around the next week to hear both of you practice in class, music flows in my veins and it's difficult to resist it's call. And that led to a strange tentative friendship which tightened, at least from my side, slowly with time. You were my non-girl company because for the first time, I was part of a "gang" of girls by myself. You were amusing but it was clear that you were very much in love with your girlfriend at the time, any one would be mad to fall for you.
Then that talent show... the one you bombed and I rocked in. Even though the high of the performance hadn't worn off, I hung around you to cheer you up. That break started the rumors which I found singularly hilarious, they were teasing me while I asked about the girlfriend. They thought we were something and I laughed like hell. I still talked with you and laughed with you and walked down the three floors with you. For the first time I didn't care for rumors. I liked you as a friend. Your general arrogance was a turn off.
Then again, we started talking online... stupid stupid stupid me upgraded you to best friend status. I slowly and idiotically started expecting you to be there and give a damn about me. even though I knew the one person you cared about was your self. Even on the day I finally got rid of the junior from my head, when I could barely hold myself up I helped you out because you were suffering from a bereavement of your own. When you promised one night that you'll play for my birthday I was convinced that you would. I think I fell for you sometime after that, while we were still talking at one in the night about stupid crazy stuff, even when I knew I should not. Even when I knew every single flaw.
That fight... I knew that prank was a prank, I knew about 15 minutes after it started that it was a prank, I let you go on with it in the hopes that being my "best friend" you will eventually give in. You didn't. on top of that you dragged in Kita, my friends matter a gazillion times more to me than my self and any other guy. I could not even look at you the next day.
Three months, three months I practically refused to acknowledge your presence, I refused to speak to you even when you sat behind me. I was so angry at myself. I was furious for caring so much.... and you told me in a round about way that "i never cared"... I practically starved myself from then on. I began to use this other friend of mine, pouring in all my friendship and care into him, talking for ages to him instead of you. When he finally perceived that there was something wrong, I confessed to him. He forgave me for using him and for his sake, I broke the fight.
But it was in vain, the friendship was lost no matter what I could do for it. Even when I gave your gag gift, it felt fake... It all stopped on my birthday, which you forgot... your only promise to me broke and with it, I realised that enough was enough...
I buried my skeletons, my friendship, my love... I had made the mistake of caring for you but now it was over... I got over you long ago, only it was on my birthday that I finally got rid of you from me. I lied to all the people who said I liked you, "I'd have to be seriously dumb to like him" I told them.
You helped my confidence in making friends with boys and when I finally had a set of friends, you made me lose my trust in the purity of friendship...I guess I can thank you for one thing, when I thought you had thrown me to ground, you simply threw me into the waiting arms of my first real love. Someone who let me be his and yet free, someone who caused me to break my fight with you, someone, who on my birthday, stood waiting like he'd been there forever, just for me. Thanks... for opening my eyes to him.

FOR ONCE I'M THANKFUL I'M LEAVING IN A MONTH,

AT LEAST THEN MY INADEQUACIES WILL NO LONGER MATTER

AT LEAST THEN,

YOU'LL GET RID OF ME

Confessions to my boyos 3

The junior

You deserve a mention, not because I loved you as much the one before or the ones after but because you loved me. Just when I was getting rid of the phantom pangs of the last, trying finally to construct a fully functional me I ran into you.

It was heart-warming really that when I behaved (finally) like myself, you found me likable. You were one of the first ever (outside my loyal set of friends) who actually asked, "you don't have a boyfriend???" in that surprised tone that made me smile. You gave me enough compliments to help me gain my self confidence. This time my self confidence was mine and mine alone never to be shattered again by some boy. You gave it the approval that I craved. We got along well... extremely so.

I didn't really realize how much you liked me until that night by the bonfire when I told you I was in the 11th. You were suddenly horrified and disappointed and (dare I say) heartbroken and it showed on your face. You were two years younger than me and even though age doesn't matter when you're older, in the school, the age we were those two years could might as well be decades. Honestly, I never felt that age difference until we discussed school and such, you always made me feel younger than you. But the situation was how it was and you were never expressed any "feelings" after that, but it didn't change them.

The last day at camp, the last night... when we all sat together trying to come up with some brilliant plan. In the middle or all that brainstorming and teasing Arjun and yelling at the girls, I suddenly realised how I was seated. I was comfortably leaning against your arm, heads inches away from your shoulder, sitting next to you on the rock and I was comfortable. Any one who knows about my slight fear of male contact knows that I would normally not end up in such a situation until I knew the guy for over a couple months. I had only known you a week and I trusted you. Later that night when you told me to stop crying cause I looked funny, I couldn't help but noticing the caring look on your face. When I literally fed you dinner while you guys practiced lines and I directed, our friends teased us mercilessly. Your friends knew and the next day at the station they all called me bhabhi until I enquired why and you picked a fight.

Despite what happened later, how reality finally drove us apart, how the conversations became awkward and how I avoided you in the corridors, how you confessed much much later that you had a crush on me, and how that confession crumbled into dust, meaningless by then, how I eventually graduated and we moved on. Despite how it quietly hit dust. For one glorious week (it seems so small but it was so long then) for one glorious week, we had something special. Something that still makes us smile when we see each other, something that still makes me laugh at the memories, something that still makes me worry occasionally for you because you're so accident prone, something that still makes you message me now and then, something that made me stand longingly at my class windows for months after we returned. We had something good.

I'll miss you, in a good, "it was nice when it lasted", non-depressing way which is what I can't say for many of the others. With you, I have no regrets other than that two year age gap... that neither of us could bridge.

Confessions to my boyos 2

You were the jerk. I was so annoyed with myself for my last choice that I actually prayed to fall for someone else, anybody else. One thing I learned from that was that desperation gets you in big trouble.
And yet you were the first guy I fell in love with for reasons you'll never geuss, you saved my life. Yes, you literally saved my life.
Back when I still believed in the goodness of you and in the "happily ever after" dream, you managed to give me reason to live. And just before that event changed me, before I became this 'over mature' girl from the 8 yr old that lived inside, before I got up the next morning to start the world anew, I fell in love.
My friends still argue it can't be love, because it wasn't returned. I remind them of the word, "unrequited" I know for sure, now more than ever, the feeling ran too deep for it to be anything else.
But I've skipped the beginning... Years ago, I saw you across the jeep, both of us strangely the only ones awake and suddenly, I couldn't stop following you with my eyes. We were in the same group and crushing on you was so easy. When you held my hand in a game once, I blushed inwardly. On the outside, I was the tough girl, my tomboyishness was getting born, the blunt manners were forming and I was on the practice grounds. I passed my diary around for everyone's email ids and was so pleased you'd written in it as well.
Weeks later, back home, one day you replied. That began a correspondence that still belies my naiviety. I still wonder why you replied, I sounded so naive, I would laugh at myself now. Then you suddenly dissapeared. You returned three months later, and then the chatting began. Then for the first time I found out you had a girlfriend, logically that should have stopped everything, but as I said, I was naive, I hoped.
One day after hour long convos, one day starting a legendary three hour convo, you saved me. Of course, that was also the day I finally understood that you would never be mine, but the torch still burned. The next day, Kita told me you were a jerk who I should stop thinking about. I found a best friend in her that day, and the same night the realisation struck me that I was in too deep. I was in love.
I went on to waste two more years on you, your inattention wearing my self-confidence away from the inside. I had little respect left for myself and almost no interest in boys. Its not really your fault. What was your fault was that even when I was glaringly apparent, you made no move to stop me. You made me run after 'the love of your life', convincing her to be with you, beacuse I couldn't bear to see you in pain. What was your fault I realy understood through somebody who did know you later. You were a player, used me and several others. I'm only grateful now that I never met you personally, lord knows whatelse I would have lost to you then. We even had a mutual friend, remember, the one who told me what you really thought of me.
The sad part is I never got free until the one after you showed up.
What makes you a right jerk, is that you've come back and forgotten who I was to you, or rather what I look like because you flirt shamelessly. You don't remeber me properly, your supposed "best camp friend".

You made me grow up, fast. I'm tentatively grateful. There is this life that you returned me to, for that a million thanks. But enough is enough, you are not a past I'll ever remember fondly, to you, from now till eternity, Goodbye.