Day 296/366

It’s just one of those days

Where nothing makes sense

You’re falling out of buses

And depression seeps in.

There’s blurriness in your vision,

About the world, you don’t give a damn

Somebody calls to scream at you

You want to kill him with just your hands.

Lurking around in the corner,

The night, like my shadow, stands.

Waiting for me to embrace it,

It offers to lend a helping hand.

Into the spirits I flow,

Slowly, taking its shape.

Can’t the madness of this day end-

In a lover’s bed or arms?

Day 214/366

Everything was fine this afternoon. I received my first salary and called up my mother to tell her the good news. I wish I had got a chance to see her reaction and hopefully, the look of pride on her face. I didn't. But that was all right.

To celebrate, I dressed up and was taken out by my aunt(s) and uncle to a fancy restaurant at a hotel. I ate what was put on my plate but did not celebrate with a glass of wine or champagne as I probably could have, in retrospect. I was content. With how things are for me, with my salary, with talking to my mother on the phone for a long time every night even though I can't hug her before going to sleep every night. There are complaints waiting to be spoken inside me. But what I'm realizing I've started doing is ignoring them.

And then I come home and turn to Twitter. 4/5/6/12 'minor' blasts in Pune. I don't get why the press has called them 'minor' or why people should not panic. If people are dying in such an unnatural way, how can you not panic? A sense of fear will only make a potential victim act out in some way or another in a situation where self defence can help, right? Why does society dictate everything and try and curb the natural instinct of human beings? If someone kissed his girlfriend during a protest and someone happened to click a photograph in that very second, why do controversies have to stem from it?

This is one of the continuations of many of my previous posts that claim not to understand humanity. I'm genuinely trying hard to and I hope I can understand good versus bad soon. I thought I had it figured out as a kid based on what I was taught by my parents and teachers. Evidently, they were not well informed. Or, to give them the benefit of the doubt, we've let the world change too much and are just struggling to find a space in this often hostile environment. Whatever the case may be, I just wish there could be easier answers than violence and terrorism and rape and abuse of so many different forms!

Day 212/366

There wasn't so much disappointment as anger. She was not supposed to be a part of the sea of mediocrity. She had always strived to be better than the rest. And for once, she didn't get what she was used to. She had failed. In her eyes and others'. There was nothing she could do to change her situation. She did not resort to any form of self torture but meditated upon the new found state of events. It dawned upon her now. This was a learning experience more important than any that she had failed to pay attention to be where she was right now. She eventually died with a content smile spread across her face.

Day 164/366

It's impossible that life could even be capable of being so twisted. One minute, you walk out from one of the finest concerts you have ever witnessed. The next, you're at a friend's place getting high and not going somewhere else you're supposed to be. The guilt trip calls begin and you decide to leave soon. You're walking on the road at 11.30 in the night in dark lanes where you can't see ahead of the next turn. In the dark, you're praying to God if there is one. You finally make it to the friend's place where you were obliged to go to that night. You are high and paranoid and scared.

The guard tells you that visitors are not allowed after 11 at night and you try and argue but are almost ready to leave. Then your friend comes down and tries to help you out. He does this in his own way - by arguing with the guard. The guard calls the secretary and complains and he hangs up on your friend. But your friend is persistent and angry and wants you to go up. He is talking things that don't make sense and will not help his case. Another friend of yours comes down. She tells you to go up and wait and that she will deal with the situation. She is not sober either and you and your partner in crime go and hide behind a bush. The secretary comes to the gate and you can hear his bike. You see neighbors approaching and get a bad feeling about this. The neighbors ask the guards if the police have arrived. You run and hide behind a pillar and call your accomplice to hide there with you.

More of your friends come down to help. Some high, some sober. It just keeps getting worse. Everyone is screaming. Your friend is praying. You pray again to this God whom you thought you disowned a long time ago. You feel like a convict on the run. You feel like you've been placed bang in the middle of a crime scene. You can't breathe and the high is just getting worse and you feel choked and suffocated and like you have a thorn in your throat. You stay still and keep checking and hoping that nothing too wrong happens. Your friends are screaming very loudly and you are afraid that more neighbors could wake up with all the noise. You can't leave because there's only one gate where all the fighting is going on.

Suddenly, it's all quiet and people are leaving. Your friends tell you to wait and an escort is sent with you and your other companions to take you to another friend's flat in the same society. You go from the back of the buildings, like Jews being smuggled out of the chaos of dictatorship to a safer place. You reach and the girl who had been fighting with the cops comes home. You think it's over and you'll go home soon. But it doesn't end. The girl is screaming and you can't understand what is going on. She screams some more in anger and a boy/your friend grabs her and twists her by the hand over the neck and you can hear her wince. It is like a puppy being hurt and rendered helpless. She falls crying to the floor.

You just sit there trying to close your eyes but not being able to. You were holding your hands to your ears but the sounds were still percolating. You just get telling someone to make it all go away. Make it go away. Make it go away.

We were to go home soon. Soon, we'd be in a safer place where you could think about how this was not supposed to happen. Humans cannot manifest their feelings and anger on others like that. It was a violation of dignity. It was the greatest act of cowardice. But it happened. And your companion told you that this does happen often between the couple and in the world. But you didn't want to accept it. It was not right. It was not humane. Someone should have stopped it. But no one did. She did not deserve to be manhandled that way. And to say that this happens often does not justify that it did.

She started screaming again and talking of how the boy could be put in trouble for what he did. He did physically hurt a mother's daughter. And why would anyone take that happening to their child? In the room, a friend tried to make her keep down her volume and pushed the table towards her to try and distract her. She took it as an act of anger against her. She asked him to hit her. There was more screaming and violence and noise. Too much noise that was not going away. He took her to his room and calmed her down.

When we were going home that night, the episode seemed to be over. But after something like this, you know you can't unsee, unhear, or undo the sequence of events that just went from bad to worse, worse to morbid, morbid to horribly violent and unthinkable.