Separation

I can’t take it any more. I’m switching to Blogger. Sorry WordPress, I guess we just have irreconcilable differences.

The url is www.itsfortytwo.blogspot.com

An Extremely Depressed Post Written While An Argument In Ensuing Less Than Five Feet Away From You.

Who are your friends? The ones you hang out with at work? The people you see around your place? The ones you call every once in a while? Mine are the ones I can call at three at the morning with a problem. The ones I can be myself around.

I love my friends. I love everything about us. I love the way we are together. I love how we’re ‘us’ not ‘Afiah, Fuzzy, Hyper and Morbid’.

The things with friends is how messed up everyone gets when one falls out with the rest.

It’s begins innocently. A small snide remark, an ignored phone call. Then she stops talking. She changes. She’s not the same girl she was anymore. One day, there’s a blow-up. All the frustration comes out. There’s yelling, and finger-pointing, and nasty remarks. She says you’ve changed, you’ve turned into bitches, you’re not the same anymore. You’re sorely tempted to tell her to look at herself first, but you don’t like confrontations, so you refrain. You decide to ignore her in order to frustrate her into talking. Eventually, you grow apart and you can’t stand that. So one day, you go up to her and tell her what it’s like. You want to clear it out. you want to cut out everything that’s been happening lately and start afresh, but life’s not that easy. Everyone has a different way of clearing things out. They want answers, they want to know what’s been going on. You’re not like that. You don’t need explanations, you just need things to be the way they were earlier. So what do you do?

You leave the room and write a extremely depressed post about it.

No, I’m Not Dead (subtitled “But I DO love plays”)

Phew, it’s been a hectic two weeks. Well, for me, anyway. Big function in school. Which equals to a play. Which equals to writing, directing and acting, all by the students. Which equals to staying in school till late in the evening, which equals to not having the energy to write. Or do anything, really, except collapse.
Anyway, the fuction was yesterday, and the play was, to put it narcistically, awesome. It was a spoof on high school movies, those awful disney demons. Reasonably funny story, although it was the acting that really made it funny.
*Plot Spoiler* (Yeah, like anyone cares.)
Story opens in a arrogant, spoilt high school. The opening scene is the morning assembly. The undeniably hopeless headmaster (a copy of our own hilarious (in his hopelessness) headmaster) is welcoming the students back after the summer vacations. Next, we see the arrogant, bitchy girls of the school catching up after the vacations. Enter Dude-Of-The-School Gay Boy and Hang-on-the-Arm Stud Boy. Some references to obvious gayness, Shah Rukh Khan and Karan Johar and showing off of fake muscles later, the drama teacher enters. A funny, agressive sort of copy of Javed Jaffery in Salaam Namaste, the drama teacher proceeds to pop Stud Boy’s fake muscles(balloons) and saunter around the classroom flaunting his rugged masculinity. He announces that an exchange program is commencing and that there will be some delagates from different parts of the world arriving that day. The Newcomers arrive and introduce themselves, only to be ridiculed by the Old Students, or, as the teacher calls them, the ‘Oldcomers’. Then he annouces that there is going to be a fuction in school and that they would all have to audition to take part in it. This leads to a dance war on Pappu Can’t Dance (the name of the leader of the newcomers gang is Pappu) after which the teacher decides that they should all dance together because they look so good. While all this is going on, there is a suspicious lack of Gay Boy, who has been kicked off stage. The next scene opens with him sitting all melancholy-like and singing “aisa kya gunna kiya ki lutt gaye, ho lutt gaye- what crime have I comitted that I’ve been robbed, oh, I’ve been robbed”(Well, it makes more sense in hindi). When enquired by his posse of admiring juniors, he confesses that he’s jealous of the newcomers and the way they’ve won all the old students’ hearts. He proceeds to rip apart all their costumes in a fit of rage and cunning. The torn costumes are discovered by one of the newcomers who breaks down and runs to the new students. they decide to ask Gay Boy for help, since his father is a big time designer. Eventually they include him in their dance and everything is a-okay. But that’s not the end. While it seems like all the newcomers are ‘cool’ now, Pappu demonstates that they’re still nerds by not wanting Physics Class to be cacelled. At this point, Gay Boy points out that school is about 40% sports, 30% extra-curriculars, 30% masti and only 10% academics(yes, the whole 110% things goes unexplained). The stage blacks out and opens again with a dance-cum-curtain call. I have a feeling the whole play was written just to fit in Pappu Can’t Dance.
*End Spoiler*
I love plays. I love the ’stay-backs’, I love fooling around with the scenes during practice, I love the stage make-up, I love changing costumes frantically, I love the rush of performing in front of an audience and the satisfaction of having made them laugh. Yes, I do love plays.

Not An End, Merely A New Beginning

A realization has been made. Not by me, by, let’s call her, Fuzzy. Apparently, I tend to look at the darker side of things. A pessimist, she called me. Now, I may not be a very Oh-everything-is-good-in-the-world kind of person, but I like to think of myself as being practical, rather than pessimistic.

Now I that I come to think of it, though, I AM prone to thinking that the sky is falling rather quickly, aren’t I? I mean, God knows, I’m a huge hypochondriac. And yes, if I stub my toe, I’ll feel obliged to go in for an X-Ray. So I guess, yeah, I am kind of a pessimist.

But this time (When the sky is, believe me, really is falling) I’m going to keep a smile on my face and my held held high.

Yes, Ali’s going away. So far away. Why must people go to college anyway? Like there isn’t enough sex, drugs and rock n’ roll in his life already. And yes, it’s going to be weird not being with him any more, but still loving him and knowing that he still loves me. We promised that if it takes eight years for us to be together again, we’ll wait, but what am I supposed to do till then? He can’t possibly expect me to hang around, single, till he deigns to re-introduce himself to my life. On the other hand, I can’t possibly expect myself to be with someone else and still love Ali. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t love someone else and love Ali at the same time, either. And I can’t be with said someone and not love him. I know that I’ll love Ali forever.
And then, even if I DO somehow manage to figure out a way to be with someone, what happens when Ali comes back? Do I leave the current flame for a past flame? Or do I break my promise to past flame and be with current flame? Neither one seems to be an option. The only thing that might work out is to be chronically single till he comes back. This is the point where, if you know me, you’ll be scoffing this idea. Yes, I know I’m not known for being able to remain single for a prolonged bout of time, but then again, I wasn’t known for sticking to just one guy before Ali came along.

And then there are friends. I’ve always been a fairly popular person, not that I ever tried. It’s just the way I am. Or, rather, the way I was. What with everything that’s happened in the past couple of months, I’ve lost the desire to keep in touch with more than a couple of my best friends. Of course, the best friend clique has changed as well. Earlier, Snow White, Bunny and Nosy used to be ‘mah bitches’. We used to live each other’s lives quite literally. But then, they were always the popular girls who got into trouble all the time. the ones who were never in class, dated practically every moderately good-looking guy in the school, always in the teachers’ bad books, called ’sluts’ by haters, of which there were many. They were always having fights with other ‘popular girls’. I was the nice one in the group. I never fought with anyone. I was nice to everyone and liked by most people. There were a couple of people, okay, one person, whom I had a, let’s say, tiff with. But I was never the golden girl either. And for me, it mattered that the teachers hated me as much as they hated them.

So I decided to clean up my act. I started attending classes. I did all my work. I stopped hanging around so much with the in crowd. Which is not to say I became an oily-haired, goody two shoes, loner. I had other friends. Fuzzy, Morbid and Hyper were my new bitches. I found that i had more in common with them, So I started hanging out with them more and more.
Eventually, one day, Mehr said, just in passing, “Well, we’re not really best friends any more, are we? I mean, you’re always hanging out with Fuzzy, Morbid and all now.” And you know what, I was cool with it. I hate confrontations, so I was glad that this was out in the open.
I do kinda feel the loss sometimes, but I’ve realized F, M and H are much better friends than the others could ever be.

So, I’ve decided that all this was my choice. I made it this way. So I’m not going to be ‘practical’ (read: paranoid and pessimistic) about it. Head held high, bitch.

So is it Alright to Let Go?

It was the 5th of May. A Monday. Everything was everything. Morning, cereal, notebook, everything. And then the phone rang.
“Afiah?”
“Yeah?”
“Is Chachu there?”
“No, but I can take a message.”
“You guys need to come to St. Vincent’s as soon as you can.”
“What happened?”
When I look back, it’s like I already knew. He hadn’t come back the previous night. He wasn’t the type to disappear and re-appear the next day.
“It’s bhaiya.”
“We’ll be right there.”
I didn’t need to ask what had happened. I knew only too well. How many times had I seen this? In movies, on the roads, in my nightmares. It was always the same.

The emergency room was practically bursting. ‘Seems like a good night for business’ I remember thinking sardonically, only to berate myself the moment I’d thought it.

There he was. A couple of casts, some bandages, but nothing looked very bad. It looked like a minor accident. Nothing to be very worried about. Sadly, you can’t really tell when someone has a coma. ‘This isn’t happening. What are we in? A fucking saas-bahu serial? Accident? Truck? Coma?’ I thought to myself. I guess I was deluding myself. I never thought something like this could happen in real life, to people I loved.
And love him, I did. Bhaiya and I might have lived in separate continents, but we were always close. It wasn’t the typical older brother-little sister relationship. There wasn’t much ‘I’ll kill the guy who even touches you’. There was no over-protection. None of the typical things. He was more of a friend than a brother. I could talk to him about anything, which I did. He was always ready with advice and solutions.

I sat by the bed the whole day. I talked to him, when everyone else was outside, or getting coffee or talking to the doctor. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t hear me. All that mattered is that I had so much to tell him, in case I didn’t get a chance again.

That evening, the heartbeat-machine-thingummy started beeping abmormally. Nurses were informed, doctors paged.
“It had to happen eventually. There’s nothing we can do.”
*beep, beep, beep*
“Not even try?”
*beep, beep, beep*
“I’m sorry, but this is it.”
*beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep*
I didn’t break down and cry. I didn’t fall to my knees. I just stood there, numb and vacant. I couldn’t take it in, I didn’t want to. I envied those who were crying, it seemed like the right thing to do. i couldn’t cry. How are you supposed to grieve someone when you don’t believe they’re really gone?

It took me a while. To come around to the fact that this was really the end. I still didn’t cry. Maybe I did, once or twice, but I spent most of my time contemplating.

I guess, at some level, I still don’t believe he’s gone. I know he’s dead, to put it bluntly, but that doesn’t mean I really believe it. ‘Were 14 years really enough? The 14 short years of my life? Were they enough to get to know him? Enough not to miss him?’ But of course not. I’ll always miss him.

Lately, though, what with everything that’s been going on, I’ve had less time to contemplate. Less time to spend in the past, and more of a reason to live the present.

Does it mean I don’t care any more? Or is it really alright to let go?

Change

Change is a funny old thing. It’s so subjective. Everyone reacts to it differently. There are people who dream change. And then there are people who thrive on it. People like actors think nothing of change. It’s a part of their lives. Every morning, it’s another day, another person to be. Their whole lives are just cycles of constant change. Learning how to be someone only to forget and learn to be someone else the next day.

People are so different that way. When it comes to change, I mean. You’d think there are people who like and people who don’t, but there’s so much more than just that.

For some, change is a way of life. Waking up somewhere different everyday. Not knowing what the day will bring you. Going some place different everyday, and staying there, not because that was the way they planned it. Simply because they like it. Ironically, it’s the only constant in their wind whirl of a lifestyle.

For me, change was an enemy. I never liked it. I’d prefer things staying the way they were. I never liked accepting death, never wanted people to leave, situations to change. I tried running away from change. Avoiding it, ignoring it, trying to cling onto the way things used to be. I craved familiarity and never wanted to step out of my comfort zone.

The ironic thing is that though I hated change and detested it when people changed, i came to change myself.
I never meant to. We all know I never wanted to. But while I was trying not to change into the person they thought I was, I changed into the person I never thought I would be. Somehow, sometime, instead of running away from change, I ran head first into it.
For a while, I tried to deny it. I told myself that, it was a phase not who I was. It was supposed to pass. I knew it would. Or, rather, I hoped it would. But slowly, I came to accept it. I started liking who I was. I enjoyed being me. Sure, I miss the way things were, the Little-Muffet-I-Don’t-Give-A-Fuck-I’ma-Do-What-I-Want. But I think I’ve come to accept the fact that change is a part of life. Yes, Life is about Moving On and there is no Growth without Change, but good God, must it be so fucking hard?

Transitions

The summer vacations are nearly over, and the time for change is fast approaching. It’s time to grow up. To ‘fit in’ in high school. It’s time to say goodbye to those leaving for college. Time to say hello to their replacements. Time to stride ahead, and not look back.

In a way, the new year begins at this time. We leave the past behind, and walk into the future. Yesterday is really over now. And there’s a tomorrow to be thought about. Times like these scare me. I don’t like change. I’d rather stay where I am. And this time it’s even harder. This time, high school’s starting, and that scares even me, Miss I-Can-Take-Anything-You-Throw-At-Me. And Ali’s going away to college, of course. Iowa City. And that is SOME distance. I don’t actually know how much and nor does google apparently. Even so, it’s not like he can just drive down to see me any old time. And then, there’s friends. This summer, I’ve learned who my real friends are. And the end marks the transition from the old to the new.

Despite all this, I’m going into the psuedo-new year with my head held high. I’m not going to let this stuff daunt me. I’m going to be strong and win this thing.

Well, that’s that.

P.S. Ali is a secret identity name. Like almost everyone on my blog is going to be.

Let’s Begin at The Beginning

So, I was reading this blog, ( http://thecompulsiveconfessor.blogspot.com ), which is Addictive. With a capital ‘A’. I absolutely cannot stop reading it! It’s like when you pick up a book and start reading it. Soon, you find yourself engrossed, and inevitably, you find yourself staying up the whole weeknight just to finish it. That’s how addictive it is.

So, anyway, I decided, I need to quit writing in my green notebook during geography class and start sharing with the world. Anonymously, of course.