Category: Life/Personal

Heartbreak – At 28

Life can be surprising, even scandalous, but somehow we manage to surprise ourselves more.

I am aware that as an single unmarried woman I should wait until marriage to write this, or to share anything related to love for that matter, like all good girls do. Now that all of us are over it, let’s move on.

The first thing you do after a heartbreak is remove all of what were your songs from your current playlist. Otherwise you run the risk of Spotify selecting it randomly from your list, and you breaking into a fit of crying while driving on Interstate 20 at 8.30AM on your way to work. If you don’t want to lose the songs, move them to a non-current playlist so you can play them at a future time when your heart is mended, the memories have been overwritten and the songs don’t poke you anymore.

Today morning I woke up and was watching a video on Insta, as you do on Sunday mornings, and somebody mentioned something about drooling. It hit a nerve and reminded me of the time J once drooled on me, and both of us broke into laughter. For a moment my still-foggy and freshly heartbroken brain couldn’t place when it had happened on our timeline.

It struck me that it’s only been a couple of weeks since then and I’m already forgetting details. We had such a short time together, and if I don’t want to “lose” these memories I should probably write them down. At some point. But do I want to “keep” them?

I’m a huge believer that we all have only a short while in each other’s lives (well, ideally more than a couple months which was the case with J, but anyway), so I tend to keep my love close and my memories closer. This time, I don’t know if I want to keep them, let alone keep them close, which is very, very unlike me.

I remember once going to Pious Achan and telling him I’d learnt something about myself. Pious Achan had replied, We’re always discovering new things about ourselves. That was five years ago.
Life can be surprising, even scandalous, but somehow we manage to surprise ourselves more.

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Falling

“Holy shit”

This is an unkind beginning to a story, I am borrowing it nonetheless.

“Holy shit”

My ex knew me before we met. He told me he had a feeling he’d fall in love with me, and then we met and he did fall. His words.

When I was in grad school, I had a classmate I liked. I had just broken up with the ex, I decided I wasn’t going to crush on this guy, and it probably wasn’t nice cos we were classmates and what if we ended up in a group project together? It was a semi-professional program and surely it wasn’t nice.
I imagine there’s a huge chunk of population that finds it off-putting when people do everything intentionally. I find it detestable myself, but it’s how I’m wired. Years later all I can think of is, Not nice? ACCORDING TO WHO?

Only until late Spring though, when another classmate asked me out. I was surprised cos I thought, Wait, that’s allowed? Unfortunately we didn’t go back to college after Spring break, and then we had classes and assignments, and those things took over.

Then I met someone last year. I knew them before we met in person, I knew they were committed already, and I was very scared I’d fall for them. So this was just another crush that I was going to gulp down and hopefully turn into nothingness. I remember meeting them for the first time and thinking Holy shit. This was going to be hard.

It doesn’t help that everyone else I meet or have met haven’t come close, or that my best friend says he must be something since I’ve talked about him as much if not more than my ex. I know I’m doing myself a disservice, but after days and weeks and months I think at this point I’m just calling a spade a spade.

I watched Fleabag today. The ending was moving, because I know what it’s like to like someone who’s not available, and to move on with life unimpressed (in Fleabag the dude was married to God).

Anyway, I like the elevator scene from 500 Days Of Summer. I like how I have tried multiple times to intentionally control feelings and then failed every time. Luckily actions are less involuntary.

Mental Health, Introverts, Conversation

I’ll be fucked if this is some transitory phase from being an introvert to extroversion. Please tell me it isn’t.

At the beginning of this year or even three months ago I couldn’t have imagined that I’d be writing this. Yet here we are.

Two weeks ago, I met somebody on a dating app (what else is new?). I would write about the guy, but let’s focus on me as we always do so nobody is scared off by this article.

He called himself a conversationalist and over a first-call asked me a bunch of questions.

I knew the questions. I knew he was trying to figure me out before he told me that, because a 25-year old me had tried it and then stopped. It’s a fairly straightforward exercise where you ask somebody a simple question, and listen.

Except really, while it is story-telling, it’s still a conversation between two people. You are on the other side ensuring they like talking through it while respecting boundaries, but most importantly retaining genuine interest in what they have to say.

Narcissists usually indulge since your interest is construed as recognition of their brilliance. But unless their jobs depended on it, the worst has to be a person who asks you that stuff only to get in your good faith, or to fit you into a familiar box. They neither want nor deserve your story, they’d probably be happy with the lukewarm one-liner you reserve for a coffee-shop greeting. Which is why bless the introverts who don’t play that game.

Well, unless our jobs depended on it.

So I love listening, but it’s my turn to speak. And then I realized my mind was a mess.

Before I could finish one half-formed thought I was reaching for another. This was new to me because behavioral interviews have been my thing, because I’d spend too much time in my head, and I usually have some idea as to what lies in there or atleast always trusted myself to follow a train of thought to arrive somewhere intelligible.
Without it, I’ve been trying struggling to define what I might be.*

So I say, I’d usually enjoy this, but this is just a bad time. And I briefly mention anxiety.

Sometimes I drive so I don’t have to listen to my thoughts. And that seems like a bad reason to do anything, especially if pushing down on the accelerator makes you feel better about drowning out the mess.

I think the irony is that mental health was my priority for half a decade, staying attentive to when I need to sleep in or go out or meet people or be compulsively active. I hear people say it can be horrible to spend time inside your head. You know what? That was today, it will be better tomorrow, and the day after I would be gushing about how wonderful my life is, just like Sunday and the whole week before that.

The mind is a scary place, you’d think you know exactly what’s going on and have no idea what’s been brewing up in there or for how long.


PS: I’ll be fucked if this is some transitory phase from being an introvert to extroversion. Please tell me it isn’t.

PPS: I know we’re all adults here but to be safe, this isn’t about talking but about talking talking.

* that was a train of thought. Phew. I’m proud.

#23 Postcard – Driving and Grocery Store Dates

There’s a scene in LadyBird where LabyBird drives a car for the first time through familiar streets of her Sacramento home. She talks about how everything feels different when you’re driving past them.
I had that feeling last Sunday as I drove through my neighborhood streets.

On my way back from office today, Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now started playing on the radio. I had just taken the final turn from a 6-lane to a 4-lane to my apartment, it was a long 5 mile stretch. I didn’t need the GPS anymore which meant I could finally enjoy the music playing – if you’re a baby driver taking on traffic on a war footing everyday, you might relate.

There’s a scene in LadyBird where LabyBird drives a car for the first time through familiar streets of her Sacramento home. She talks about how everything feels different when you’re driving past them.
I had that feeling last Sunday as I drove through the streets near my place.

It wasn’t extraordinary. I missed being able to halt by neighborhood roads in the morning (because there’s no shoulder here for the most part and no parking on the sides, ugh first-world problems). It was Halloween weekend, some of my teammates were in office with families and that was probably a more interesting place to be. I came to know from Bryan later that that was on Saturday.

But it is magical at night when I drive the roads at 15mph.
The city is almost shameless in its sprawl, yet the narrower byroads are too charming in Texas, like suburban paved streets interspersed with familial nothingness. They feel like home, the church-fronts are filled with kids in the morning (or a wedding party), and the extensive parking lots are empty and welcoming at night. Lit-up reindeers smile from front lawns of houses tucked away from the main roads, and family cars crowd the streets on weekends. On a related note, some of the houses also bring to mind Virginia the movie with an unkempt front porch, but I’ll let that one slide.

On Sundays, I clearly match this town’s energy.

Everyone dresses like it’s Sunday everyday here, but especially on Sunday. (I’m constantly overdressed in this state).

In Atlanta we’d visit the local Target, a 10-min walk away, a couple of times during the week. If you’re remotely well-dressed, some also-welldressed guy would try to chat you up or a 5’3” dude would ask if you needed help in reaching the shelves. (I’m 5’2.5” for context). There’d always be someone who had clearly just moved to the city, their trolley overflowing with dinner sets and soap dispensers. My local Target here though is filled with young moms and working women like me. All dressed up still, but I miss Atlanta. I was clearly too cocky for my own good during my time there.

Also we need more dates happening in grocery stores! My own Modern Love chapter, I am positive, will be during a run at Target.

Afterwards, Chandelier by Sia came on. I was 2 minutes away from my apartment complex, in the two-lane towered by tall trees and houses with large front porches.

I sometimes dread our parking, but this time I got a nice spot on the 3rd floor. Here we are 🙂

#12 Postcard – Choices and the Roads not taken

They say everywhere you go becomes a part of you somehow. But don’t you also leave a bit of your self behind, every place you leave?

They say everywhere you go becomes a part of you somehow. But don’t you also leave a bit of your self behind, every place you leave?

I cannot think of any city I have lived in without feeling that lump in my throat, except Trivandrum. And maybe that comes from the knowledge that Trivandrum is home, it’s where I’ll always go back, and there is no leaving, really.

I’ve lived in Delhi, Georgia, Texas. And there are different, younger versions of myself residing in all these places. I only have to go back to see them.

When I visit Rajiv Chowk, I see the 22 year old me on my way back from visiting Valyamma or Achu Annan, waiting for Dwarka line on the other side of the rail. My backpack is filled with the fish fry Valyamma packed for me, or all the Haldiram’s Achu Annan bought me. In December that kid is preparing to become an IAS officer, in March she’s decided she will do International Relations in JNU, and in 2 years I’d be there for my visa interview at the consulate before I leave for Atlanta.

Years later, when I moved from Atlanta, I was sad. I was leaving behind my grad school friends, a place I had grown to love and that I could see becoming my home, a college that gave me my graduate education, a campus I loved to walk around in, gardens and shops I grew to enjoy visiting. I haven’t gone back, but I know I’ll find that 25 year old kid walking the bridge to Target, smiling mindlessly at dogs and the sunset and the dressed-up women posing at the Memorial gate.

There is comfort in familiarity, and I embrace that fully.

To think that we’re where we are because of choice, chance, and the associated what-if’s I grapple with if I ponder long enough (and I’ve had the privilege of choice for a few years). What if the 22 year old me followed another trail of thought to discover something else, what if I’d stayed in Atlanta and not moved?
But we could spend the rest of our lives playing What If, and then some.

Today I was walking back from the Indian grocery store, and I realized I’m growing comfortable here as well, and I’ll miss stuff whenever it is that I leave. I’ll always miss Delhi because it has some of my happiest memories, and that happy innocent kid that I can never go back to. Atlanta, because it gave me so much. Texas, too.

So maybe what we leave behind is our present selves, because we know there’s no way to hold on that comfort even if we want to, except in the form of memories.

But whenever I visit, I know I’ll find those younger versions. They never ask, How are you? Because they aren’t curious, somehow, they’re happy right there.

That Delhi kid still lives somewhere around Karol Bagh. She looks forward to finding out what’s in her evening tiffin, shuffles her way through the loud crowds of CP and reads her yellow Vision IAS notes on the long metro rides home. In Atlanta, Crash Into Me still plays in my room on a dark, rainy evening while Uma hums a tune in the kitchen, putting the chai on.

And maybe we like to think there was something more there, something we missed out on by leaving, that we can’t get back to. That secret, the answer to the what if, only the version that stayed behind knows. Yet when you visit, they only offer you a naughty smile. It’s a secret that will stay there, stay there with that version of you that you left behind. 🙂

#13 A life too long, too short

Life is precious because it’s short, that’s why it’s special, because we know it’ll end one day.

I watched 24 Netflix/Prime series this year. One of them was The Good Side, a show about afterlife that I watched mostly for Jameela Jamil, where heaven is filled with people drunk on happiness to the point where they are brain-jaded and simply want to leave. Like a death after death. At that point Kristen Bell observes Life is precious because it’s short, that’s why it’s special, because we know it’ll end one day.

Today (two weeks from the day of sharing) was not a good day. Today I also realized that Adulting is hard not only because there’s nobody providing after you, but because it feels like even Nature seems to have stopped keeping track.
At 5, 10, 15 years of age there’s a whole set of social and biological changes you (are expected to) go through. Parents walk (or maybe push, and some yank) you through some of it, but Nature takes care of the rest. There is so much to be discovered and to look forward to.

One day at school your friend tells you her elder sister got her periods, and then you wake up with pubic hair one day. Everyone watches as you grow taller/fatter with cyclically better/worse features while you can only hope it ends well. One day we’re discussing male anatomy over our biology records, and on another we are finally texting guys and on another kissing them. There is just so much new stuff to explore, so much awkwardness that you slowly find your way around.
(Okay I realize all my examples had to do with sexuality and reproductive health but you get it – or maybe that’s all we are as human beings and that’s all Nature intended to keep track of anyway, but I can’t digress today).

Then all of a sudden you’re 25. All you have to look forward to are when the barely-visible but definitely-there folds appear, when the freckles spread over like curry on hot rice and when those inevitable greys make their way. You’ve seen just enough of the world to not have too much to look forward to. Sure you learn new things about people every day but it feels never-ending. People are simple, people are complex. You’ve by now figured out what you need to do to keep in touch with those in your life and with some you indeed do, but you always wish you knew more people and yet once you do you aren’t quite sure if you want them to stay, or if they would.
And on most days they are annoying but by now you know people are what really lend your life meaning so really there’s no way out.

So then what else is left? Why isn’t daily life rife with learning? Why is personal growth all that remains? Why isn’t Nature edging me towards it? Are we just bound to witness trees change the same colors (and not even that in the tropics)?

What do I have to look forward to? So that you can help those less fortunate than you was what I came up with when I was younger (but really my mom came up with that), and I don’t seem to have discovered anything more exciting since, and I am not sure there is one. (And I do agree, it is good enough).

So today for the first time, I wondered at how long life is, and maybe just maybe wished it was shorter. What if we were told we’d only live until 40? How different would things be? My head hurts trying to picture that and I will not vomit that oft-repeated tirade on live every day as if it were your last or whatever.

What else is left?

And I get why people get married then, because what else is left? Yet it’s weird because how can it be that there isn’t more to life, especially when both companionship and progeny are optional? So then it makes sense to me now – it looks like this what Nature had in mind because it begins to deprive you of things once you pass the “reproductive age”. (At the time of publishing I have found something worthwhile, but that doesn’t change the four weeks of hopelessness when I was lost, and I can’t be sure it wouldn’t return.)

I think my issue is the realization that I have been so passionate about so many things all my life, my struggle has always been picking one thing out of my long list, life has always seemed too short to do it all and mortality has appeared cruel, and for the first time my list feels blank. Maybe I’m disillusioned because at 23 I was certain I could help everyone I wanted to but today I feel like our problems are too big to be solved (maybe that’s what a year and a half in the US did to me, or maybe that’s just mid-twenties, I’m welcoming ideas). Once blasphemous, today I can almost understand how the prospect of death might be charming to some, and for all the wrong reasons I believe.

Tomorrow I’ll come back to say life is indeed too short to do all that we want to but for today, I’m wondering what a long life I have ahead of me.

Note : As of the day of sharing, I have found one thing to add to my list so I’m happier (thank you Rohit :)). Last year I thought dancing and training my body muscles was a good personal goal to have but it somehow seems too short-lived a desire today (in other words, I’ll be over it too soon). Reading other mortals’ thoughts seems like a nice thing to look forward to. I’m still not back on the life-too-short sentiment yet but I’ll come around soon, I hope.

Also I’m not depressed, I just feel different and am still navigating my way through unfamiliar territories.

PPS : I almost forgot my GitHub reads an extremely self-centric “The day you feel that life’s long enough to do everything you want to, is the right time to get out and search for something new 🙂“. Well, child is father of the man, no?

A Tropical Sunday

A tropical Sunday from 5 years ago

Sundays without practice are rare. Opening the Whatsapp group (renamed the previous night to Practice at 9) with a half-open eye at 8:50 on Sunday morning, only to see the latest message ‘no practice’ – heavenly. It’s afternoon, my stomach is full from all that kappa and meen curry, and I have a nap to look forward to and I also look forward to waking up hungry so I can go downstairs and eat more of that.

If you’re from a tropical place you’d know a Sunday lunch isn’t lunch if you haven’t sweated profusely either during, before or after it (I know it’s a tropical thing because Mark Wiens shares the sentiment). The kitchen is hot and humid, so is the market, so is the car, so is everything. Nobody wants to be outside but it’s Sunday so you have to sweat.

I should’ve aimed for a productive Sunday but it’s Sunday, and all that sun is going to lull me to sleep.

I should draw the curtains before falling into a nap, otherwise I’ll be sweating like shit when I wake up. Why are Sundays so drawn out yet so similar and short?

I wake up sweating like shit anyway, my back unpleasantly drenched, face sweaty, the sun bathing my room in all that light even with a single window open. The world outside is bright and blinding at 4, a distant jackfruit tree in my neighbor’s backyard hissing in the hot afternoon breeze. I stretch my arms, and the black pants I wore to market with Achan earlier falls to the floor.

Ugh.

I look around and the room is still messy. I cannot believe my room is still messy. It was messy before I fell asleep, it was messy when I was 15. It’s messy now at 20. It looks glorious in the sun though, all the colors (read clothes) on the single bed, encroaching onto the double one. And on the rack. I must find time at night to clean up, I’ve been judged my whole life for a messy room.

Well at least I have stuff on the walls, that should offer some redemption. Why can’t people just watch Jack Sparrow and the weird cat stickers on the walls and ignore the rest of the room? And David Beckham shining in the rays, who I’m not even a fan of but Tessa gifted that when I was 14? Why’s that still hanging on the shelf? How have I not noticed? The last time I noticed it I was 15 and rearranging this room and adding an embarrassing handmade curtain on the steel book shelf.
Has anyone else noticed?

I want to sleep, but WAIT THERE’s KAPPA. That’s why I welcomed sleep in the first place. Do you know how horrible it is to fall asleep, wake up to realize there’s nothing nice to eat? If not you can never appreciate a sleep with the knowledge that something nice awaits for when you wake up.

Upstairs at 4 is just bright sunlight everywhere, it’s blinding. (Luckily I didn’t need glasses and didn’t get headaches when I was 20). Okay, Amma’s outside in the garden-slash-rainforest. The tiles are still warm and the day still bright.

“Harvesting aana amma?”

“This is the second batch,” she says holding up her cupped palms filled with kovakka. She’s also munching on them. I pick two sturdy looking light-green ones (that’s how you know they’re not ripe/bitter inside) and throw them in my mouth, proceeding to carry them all in my t-shirt crinkled basket.

I have never understood how people dressed up neatly at home. I probably dressed nice from 5-9, from 10-15 I’d rather not look at what I wore at home, repeat for 16-19. In a lot of pictures from those days I wear a shiny shorts from my brother’s jersey set (I had like 4 or 5 of them*), and one of his tee shirts I had picked up, or some random top from my cupboard that I wore like a derelict. 100% of the time I looked like someone who received terribly mismatched clothes from a donation.

The pictures are hard to look at. My mother never had issues with what I wore though. And the pictures are unbearable I tell you, and I have confronted my mother in later times on how she could let her only daughter walk around like that.

“There’s more,” I proceed to the creeper to pluck. “How long you been here.”

She tells me what she’s been up to while the rest of us have been on our Sunday siesta.

“Ottum orangeelle!” She slept a while. She’s really happy when she’s out here and lights up like a child every time there’s a rose blooming, and its close-ups end up in her Camera gallery. She also loves attending flower exhibitions and clicking photos at odd close-up angles, the latter also with couples at their wedding receptions. (I never got it back then but guess some 5 years later I click trees and gardens wherever I go as well.)

I’m looking out for the really young and tiny ones now, like the ones where the wilted flower is still intact, they’re probably a couple of days old and are super crunchy. They go straight into my mouth. I’m a bad person.

There’s a wind and all the mango trees and the curry leaves and everything else in the forest sing. Not dry rustling leaves on the ground but healthy, rich and evergreen bunches thick on tall branches. Tender curry leaves and long mango leaves and fat broad ones on the jackfruit tree plant which never grew up. There’s usually also tiny birds on the chembarathi, often attacking at my brother’s window with their sharp tiny beaks.

I ask if there’s tea.

“Illa,” she answers in a duh way. Sunday tea is late unless I’m ravenous and there’s nothing to eat and I prepare tea in a fit to calm myself down.

“Well it’s hot here I’m going inside, is anything on TV”

“Arinjudade, nokeella” (yes she is from Kollam :D)

I proceed back inside with my t-shirt harvest cup – and plunk transfer them on to the dining table. There’s a brass vase-like holder (that doesn’t match the table) which I should probably use but it stays empty. If I were hungry enough I’d chomp down all of it myself, but today there’s kappa so that’s where I’m going and couldn’t care less.

Later in the evening

I’m sitting on the verandah entrance with my tea cup, legs spread on the lower steps. (Pictures of the pose exist, they’re terrible). One of the things about tea is drinking out of a cup you like, and figuring over time just how strong you need it to be (and just how much) to relax, and how much to refresh. I notice how dark(er) my knees have become from that single knee drop step in the choreo, and a solar-system shaped blob from childhood that persists. I had claw marks from our poochas criss-crossing all over my two arms and my perennial concern during ages 7-9 was what if they’re permanent, how would I explain them to others (as I am now) for the remainder of my life that I wrestled with cats to take their ticks out? They’re gone now, so will this blob sooner or later I guess.

I now drink from a Walmart mug, but then I’m 25 26 now, after many effortful attempts the tea is prepared in a microwave and for better or for worse, I’m okay with that. Unlike the claw marks, I can still find the solar system somewhere in there if I look hard enough.

The comma,

The beauty of the comma lies in all it stands for. Comma is hope, just like semi-colon is (the better) alternative to a full-stop. It’s an appeal to pause and to look around, to not get lost in details when it gets too much, to not lose track of all that makes life beautiful.

I was watching 13 Reasons Why (again) and realized, If I had to get a tattoo today (maybe I wouldn’t get it or maybe I would, but if I had to) I’d get a comma.

The semi-colon has received its due, sure, but what about the comma? Not enough has been said about it. What if an impending full-stop was not your issue, what about getting through every day?

I hate talking in metaphors as well.

Comma, we’re taught, is a pause in the sentence. It’s often a necessity. At other times it’s yet another device to structure your writing, your sentence, to convey your tone.
And they’re mostly harmless.

I like trees, flowers and life.
I like trees, flowers, and life.

I wanted a pause after flowers– maybe that gave it a rhythm in my head, maybe I was pensive or maybe I’m just obsessed with adding unnecessary punctuation that infuriates the shit out of readers.

But the beauty of the comma lies in all it stands for. Comma is hope, just like semi-colon is (the better) alternative to a full-stop. It’s an appeal to pause and to look around, to not get lost in details when they overwhelm, to wait and remember all that makes life beautiful.
Because there’s always details, all day everyday. And when they appear larger than life, remember to ,

For instance, this whole year I’ve wondered how in the big picture I’ve spent my 25th year on earth without eating good meencurry while staying away from people I love. I ask myself everyday, is anything worth that? For now all I have are questions. Also I think that was a bad example.

My brother and I talked about (terribly) longer sentences the other day – how they often creep up in my writing, how he thinks the work is badly edited when he comes across one in a news article/report, to which we discussed and decided (or I did :P) that it’s cool if it isn’t formal writing, and it’s cool if the statement is still coherent.
I have stretched out so many sentences into whole paragraphs made possible only by the comma – and maybe a hyphen. 😀

And while it might sound so much like an inferior sibling to the semi-colon, in a lot of cases, comma suffices. It gets you through. It’s for daily use.

And it does its job pretty damn well too, no?

An evening of sad songs

Ah the good songs and places and things people ruin for us

I wish I didn’t have a headache from lying in bed
Listening to sad songs
Crying
About the old lover, over an estranged parent
It wasn’t meant to go far
But you know how it is on Saturday evenings
One thing leads to another
And before you know it, you’ve taken it one too far.

Ruined what could have been a perfectly nice night
Sipping sweet lime soda with no bubbles in it
The way I like it

This song here, he hated how everyone was singing or talking about it
And I knew I’d ruin it if I translated for him
We’d both hate it in fact.
So I told him it was a nice song
Not how it sounded like us.

Ah the good songs and places and things people ruin for us
The old lover, with his unnecessary soft singing between kisses
That you swoon over, only to break your heart in later
And a parent with their loving lullabies
That later turned too cold and distant and everything in between

The songs come back sooner or later, when one day you think
To revisit the goodness that once was
That you’re ready.
Perhaps not never though, on a less sad note –
Maybe just not tonight.

So it could’ve been a perfect Saturday night sipping sweet lime soda
The way I like it with the bubbles all out
I simply got it all wrong, again.

Featured image : Bawra mann

the fantastic dream life

Steve Carell, friends, family and my crush – what more could I want in a dream?

Dreams are fantastic affairs these days.

It started in the dining room of our engineering college staff quarters where my family lived until I was 5. My class was all huddled in that room on chairs and other furniture that I really didn’t take note of, attending a lecture. I scanned across but couldn’t identify any faces except for my crush who sat on the edge of a bed (he wore a yellow tee-shirt and trousers). The professor was Steve Carell.

I mean.

Around 10 seconds into the dream it was revealed that I was sick and had to lie in another bed (in the same dining room), it so happened that Steve Carell was also a doctor and administered me a drip. Curiously my catheter had a plaster on it that said 11 Days in extremely conspicuous red. But also it wasn’t just a mere sickness – it was understood that I suffered a highly malignant disease but was getting better, I’m sure the disease had a name that I could grasp the urgency of in the dream but that obviously didn’t translate so well to real life. My doctor was extremely patient and caring, it almost seemed like I was his only patient and his whole life was devoted to praying for my good health.
Well, the more Carell the better. I’m not complaining.

My class simultaneously transpired on the other side of the room, much like you would expect it to while you’re battling a disease some 2 metres away (it wasn’t a big dining room but it was decent). I have no idea what they were studying but who cares when Steve Carell has all his attention to you? I remember wondering if this can go anywhere, then remembered my crush was pretty closeby (a dilemma I can conjure up only in my dreams, it’s only half-real even in the dream).

The doc later came to my bed and said “11 Days..” in his gruff voice, and just sat there looking into the distance and away from the camera with a proud smile and welled up eyes. He had no other dialogues that I can remember now (it’s been some 6 hours), but he looked at me proudly as if I did well with the medication etc. That’s when I realized – there was no future for us. UGH.

The fact that Steve was probably meant as a father figure in the story dawned on me. I crushed any advances (or thoughts thereof) in my head. I mean even in my dream I knew Carell wasn’t making a re-appearance any time soon in my life except on Netflix.

SETTING: Parallel Dream

In the meantime, I have also been walking around, participating in parallel universes. In the living room (of the staff quarters home) is an ongoing tuition class from my school timeline. I see three familiar faces from a different school (I’m friends with their friend, but whatever). They are speaking in hushed tones, and I make out “pregnant”, “we cannot talk”.

I cannot tell if somebody I know might be pregnant, or if they are talking about 13 Reasons Why that I binge-watched recently, but I also cannot remember in my dream-memory if there was a pregnancy on the show (real-life memory: there was). And then, a gang of my friends from college (CET) come out the class, drag me away and tell me Somebody is pregnant and that I need to leave.

And I leave to meet Reshma at Sreekariyam, right opposite the market but a little further away. She checks my temperature, looks at a bunch of papers that look like lab results and tells me I’ll be fine, that I’m doing good, glancing at my 11 Days sticker plaster. I stand there feeling grateful for the hot doctor and doctor bestfriends I have in my life.

My crush is a pretty nervous person. I mean the outgoing but nervous up-close kind. Or maybe he just doesn’t like me. But either way, I’m sitting there in my family chair made with cane and wood (there are 2 of them and are now in the 1st floor hall at our place), just listlessly looking around on what to do with my time until the plot thickens, the catheter still on.

The dude sits there on a diwan next to mine and I can see him from the corner of my eye, as you do with crushes (the diwan didn’t exist during engineering quarters days though, we bought it some 8 years ago only). I am supposed to be frail and in recovery mode, although I really cannot wait to hear about the pregnancy. In my defence I think my brain was 18 in the dream. The class is dispersed but obviously none of the people I’m friends with are here.

And then, as a climactic move, the dude gets up and plonks on to the cane chair next to mine, making no efforts no hide that he’s making a huge effort. I just hope neither of us makes this awkward. Even in dreams second chances are hard.

So 11 Days huh?

It feels good to know this was rehearsed. I mean that was obviously a rehearsed line.

Yes so crazy. -i must not mention how hot my doctor was- but the effort is going to ruin this-

SO how are you doing now?

And like a Mani Ratnam movie that begins a highly anticipated scene and thence leaves the better but probably understood bits to your own imagination (that is probably wonky and not as advanced as Mani Ratnam’s and is probably going to ruin the story), the camera slowly cuts away, hoping that the leads have made it after lending them a good-enough beginning.

Carell left the scene long ago but also this is crush-logic right here : even if Steve Carell were around, if you have a shot with your crush, just take it goddammit.

SETTING: A Flight on the Runway, boarding

It feels like a college tour but my brothers and amma are with me. The inside looks like a tourist bus, we load our bags in the overhead bins, the rest of my class do not have families with them (I wonder why 😐 ). My family soon disappears into the crowd as I scan the seats to see the dude waving at me with an awkward acknowledging smile from the very back of the cabin.

Wow, so that earlier conversation led nowhere. And I can’t even change seats. Great.

And while everyone is settling into the flight-cum-bus, in an extremely uncharacteristic move, my amma goes missing. I rush outside, my brothers and I are separated into two alternate dreams which soon converge as my brothers and amma return from a paragliding trip elsewhere.

We still need to board and there are too many flights parked on the runway one after another as we run past them to the very end. I lead them to the front entrance and as we enter, my mother asks, Is this the right flight?

Obviously we do not have flight tickets or numbers to refer to. There is only one way to find out. I jump outside and run to the back entrance, open the door (because it’s a bus) and peep inside to see a yellow t-shirted figure.
Excu- oh hey! Thanks!

It’s the dude, he turns and an instant reflex of an exhilarated smile pops on his face, the same on mine, and I run all the way to the front (because it’s a plane) and yell, Ammaaa it’s the right flight. Or at least the one we should be on.

Shubham.

Note: I thought a Steve Carell snapshot would be safer.

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