in-between-sound-and-silence

However, after this last time, I no longer think that my crises have no ‘real’ bearings. More often than not, these crises plunge me into a state of debilitating inquisitive mode. During the last one, I found myself pathetically attached to my bed as the idea/feeling that everything and everyone around compels us to be as far away from the truth as possible started somersaulting in my head. Before I am accused of being a puritan or an idealist, I need to state – as this is a rather public sort of a statement – that I do not celebrate ‘honesty’ as a virtue, I think it is this the indulgence of the vain. I do not have a philosophical, emotional, ideological or sexual stance against lying. The truths, I felt (feel) so desperate in the want for, are the little, fragile yet grounded, truths about self, the ones we love, the ones we want to love, the ones we hope to trust, the ones we aspire to fall back on, which we have learnt and remembered to forget. This is not a spiritual sermon to know your inner self, forgive and forget, trust and love. It is to reach out, here I only speak for self, for the truth that all these things, virtues, nirvanic-organsmic states  – forgiveness, forget-ness, trust, and love – are difficult and nearly impossible to achieve. To acknowledge that the crises that knock on my door are not moments of temporary insanity only because I do not have a logical, rational answer for my pedantic friends. Also that the crisis, in the wake of consistently increasing distance I maintain from my truths, is permanent only disrupted by bouts of sanity when well-learnt survival strategies of rationality, logic and dead emotions take over.

Each crisis, as P. put it, has a story: a plot, climax and anti-climax. If, when going through one, you tell yourself the story of the crisis from when you think it started, you will see the truth about the main cause (narrative) of the crisis. You might not be able to resolve it but you will know it. It will not leave you in the lurch and, better still, you will be sympathetic to yourself. After spending hours thinking about narrating the ‘crisis to yourself’, I not only felt the truth about my last crisis, the main cause, but also acknowledged that the reason I felt compelled to perform my crisis, so to say, whenever I was struck by one which was not very different from the main cause of the crisis itself. Indeed, there were moments of doubts. I thought, not without a sense of disparaging cynicism, does this ‘story telling’ not imply replacing one strategy of survival with another? Who amongst does not know the fantastic proportion stories can assume? However, there lies the catch … you need to tell a truthful story. You need to narrate the story of yourself without sympathy but not lacking in empathy.

Thanks, P.. My crisis is still not resolved but I do not feel guilty, apologetic or pathetic about having a crisis. Or performing it. More likely than not, I shall not perform my next crisis. Performance in front of an audience with limited capacity for truth causes anxiety and guilt. My crisis is as real as I am. And I am no longer sorry for it.

Having reached at this point, I decided to take a step further, not without moments of faltering hesitation, to give my ‘irrational, illogical’ crisis a face but also list truths about self, which I had long remembered to forget. Undertaking an   endeavour as such in public may entice some to accuse me of sustaining the performance contrary to what I said earlier. It may very well be true but that shall only reveal itself in the next crisis. I shall wait for that episode. For now, the intent of this rather public sort of a statement is not to evoke sympathy, exhibit cleverness and arrogance, excite helplessness or expect forgiveness. It is in its stead to allow myself to have these truths ‘out there’ so that when next I am attached to the bed – and pathetically calling out for people – I can reach out to them. To remind myself that if I could reach out to some of the truths, I might be able to find some more. Or to realize that I was lying even then and to try, yet again, modestly to reach out to the truths.

In this story about my last crisis and truths, details are of who, how and what are incidental.

The crisis is precipitated by how a situation or an individual throws me in the throes of what I felt when I was five; helpless, pathetic, alone, eager to disappear, obscenely desperate for attention and very close to wetting my knickers. My mother had a favourite party time story which she would gallantly repeat at, well, every party. By the time she was carrying me five months by acts of providence, she had to take on the responsibility of bringing up her brother’s two daughters. A pact was made with a good ‘family friend’ that if the child she were carrying was a girl, they would adopt her. And this is not the climax of the story or the story itself. The party story instead was this, I was born, and the family keeping their promise visited my mother in the hospital to ‘check me out’. They did not adopt me, my mother would add, because I was so ugly. I had a full crop of thick black hair, a spouted nose and thick lips. Enough to scare anyone. Except me, everyone found it funny. She, in the years to come, did not spare a moment to thrash out inches of her life on me, on everyone around, but, for me, this ‘party story’ still remains the most devastating thing she ever did to me. It left me permanently feeling helpless, pathetic, alone, eager to disappear, obscenely desperate for attention and very close to wetting my knickers. I left home a decade back but I forgot to leave behind the baggage of these emotions, deluding myself that with the threshold crossed so was the pain. That was the most basic truth about/for myself I never touched as intimately as I do now. My desperation for attention, obscene and overt, found its’ calling in melodrama, pathos and pain. The truth is/was, I never knew how to seek for it otherwise. I could not respond to genuine fondness because, in all honesty, I did not know how. The truth also is that in all these years, even with clear analytical skills and vague intellect, I could not tell myself the fault was not mine. I had grown up feeling so guilty that even now the residue of forms it a thick skin over me.

In short, being with people, whose limits I haven’t tested and tried, freaks me out. When alone, I scare myself. The truth is that the only emotion which has validated my emotion until now is guilt and I am not even Christian. Or have faith in God. I feel guilty when I like someone, when someone likes me, when I hurt anyone, when I don’t, when someone hurts me, when I am doing well, when I am making money, when I am not, when I hate my mother, when I pity my father, when I wish I knew my brother better, when I write long public statements … acknowledging this truth does not absolve my guilt but allows me to give myself a chance not to feel guilty.

If you like me, I will not drown it in cheap Gin. If I like you, I will not drown myself in guilt.

There are other truths, of/about myself, of those whom I care for, of those I cannot forgive/forget easily, for those I shall never learn to love, far less dramatic but by no account any less significant. I can commit to love passionately but I don’t know how to compromise. I feel no one can and no one should compromise not in love. I subscribe to all the Sunday dailies but the first thing I read in all them are, the funnies and horoscope. I read the op-eds during the week. P. was the one I enjoyed reading the Sunday dailies with most. In fact, she taught me how to. I like children and dogs but will only be able to love mine. B. got me very close to having both. I did not because guilt of loving him was greater than not doing so. I enjoy bus rides, talking to strangers but I never let those strange conversations become familiar. The Delhi winter smell is enchanting, seductive and almost a woman. I have never loved her enough. I am a loyal friend. But I constantly test the limits of those who offer their friendship. No one ever tests my limit. I am either a bloody good friend or not one at all. I know there is a limit but with people I even vaguely believe I can be myself, limit is the last anyone should be thinking about. My friendship or love or hatred does not come with ‘fragile: handle with care’ label. I know, now, most does. Also there is an expiration date.

Enough said.

But … there is breakfast of bacon and poached eggs on the side. I do brilliant frittatas and salads. The only person, however, who makes me enjoy it is Rr. I love cooking for Rr.

Friendships are as fragile as fantastic loves, only it allows for fake concession that you can ignore. No body does. Everyone pretends. 

Every good friend is a failed lover in disguise. Every lover is a good friend in need of a truthful talk and a decent fuck.