Body-shaming myself!

Fat, fatso, elephant, baby hippo, and whatnot. The clothes in your age section at the mall don't fit, and the shoes in the gender section don't fit. You sit on the last bench at school because otherwise other students cannot pass through. You cannot sit on the swing at the park because, well, you are fat! All these were just till my primary schooling. The secondary school version of these comments blackened even further. As adolescence was catching up, kids started to judge each other for the choice of clothes, colors, and well ofcourse shapes. And the talk of the town is when a girl is fat, it directly means she is going to be forever alone.

I am one such girl,  born and brought up in a pretty secure, cozy family. Parents, unintentionally, imbibed the same thoughts in me. Get slim, or else you will be left alone. Friends (all slim and petite), started to have boyfriends and mini skirts. And here I was, struggling with the thigh chafing. Trying to find a solution to the underwear rashes and grandma arms. 

Well, even after such a fat childhood, I managed to gather up the confidence to get a boyfriend in college and somehow ended up being some kind of a sex magnet. Why? Because apparently, no matter what continent, most men want a thick girl in bed but a petite one in the living room. Enlightenment struck by the end of my 18th year. It seems, if you want to be desired, you better over-compensate by giving a lot more than what you receive. And that's exactly how my college years went by.

And here I stand today, with just a handful of non-judgemental people in my life where I feel secure, wanted, and empowered. Knowing, no matter what the world says, my mind matters more than my body. My intelligence trumps my libido. My dreams outdo my sexuality.

Although it was pretty late in life, I finally, and most importantly, proudly stopped body-shaming myself!  This is to all those women out there - Before everyone else, I think its time to first accept ourselves and stop body-shaming ourselves!

A note to self...

The road seems too long when you try to walk it alone. But as a matter of fact you are never alone. To come to think of it, you actually have a lot of things to be thought about. You actually need to spend some time with yourself to find the better you. I feel it's always difficult to communicate with self. I have been struggling all my life to find the suitable time to talk to myself. After a few unsuccessful attempts to do so I figured that even though I say that I don't care what the world says, I actually care a lot. Rather too much to let myself let loose even when I am alone.

What does someone think of you? How do they see you? Are you good enough for them to keep you in their lives? Am I a good person to be around? All these and many more questions have always haunted me. They suck out so much energy that I forget to be myself. I am so consumed by these thoughts that I miss out on the fact that there are people who like me just the way I am. The so very pessimistic me has always looked at those who would look away when I am smiling. Never really bothered looking at those who are smiling just because I am smiling.

This goes to all of them who have been mean, rude and cold with me. It is because of you guys I found some of the most real friends in life. Just something that my heart felt today!

Zindagi

Manzeelein toh bohot mili, raste bohot kum.

Dost bhi bohot mile, humsafar bohot kum.

Samajhnewale bohot mile, bina kahe samajhnewale sirf tum!

Aaj thodasa hasne ka mann kiya, tumhari yaad aayi, aasuyon ne humari taraf rukh mod liya.

Aaj thodasa rone ka mann kiya, tumhari yaadon ne hi uspe malham laga diya.

Ye kaisa pyaar diya tumne ki jab bhi kuch mehsoos karna chaha, tumhare khayalon ne uska rukh hi badal diya!

The black one

Well, it's one of those days today when you feel nothing. When you don't want to feel anything. Being so driven by emotions, I have always spoken or written my heart out. But this is some new territory. Something different. Something much bigger than my feelings. It has been 2 years that I am staying alone and all it has done to me is made me grow up a lot. Adulting is difficult to handle when you look at it as work. But if you truly love the way you are turning out and don't keep any regrets, it is a wonderful experience and to know that you can do everything by yourself. Basically you can be your own hero!

You can take all the decisions on your own, you can make mistakes and learn from them without anyone instructing you. You can push yourself to do things which otherwise you wouldn't because you have someone to fall back on. It's scary how staying  alone grows on you. You don't need anyone to do anything for you. You don't have anyone to look at you when you are miserable. You don't have anyone to raise eyebrows when you do something weird.

But to come to think of it, is it really a boon or a curse? Is it so that you won't ever feel the need to share your life with someone? Is it so that you start liking being alone that everything else just seems puny? Wondering if this could mean that I would want someone more than anything now or I wouldn't!

The birthplace of sarcasm

Inspite of being a home to many people from different cultures and parts of India, Pune is made of hilariously arrogant people. You get to see this city doing everything with discipline, except watching its mouth. We celebrate, with discipline. We mourn, with discipline.

With all the other pluses, Pune gets a title of the city that sleeps from 1 pm to 4 pm. So what if someone chooses to let go of the money he'll make in those 3 hours. So what if he gives priority to his beauty sleep rather than slogging. And you will see Pune being proud of their beauty sleep even today.

Coming back to arrogance. The birthplace of royalty, the Peshwas. I think this statement does full justice to the sentiment. You will see the Peshwai running in our blood even today, and it doesn't matter if you aren't related to the originals. For a Punekar, being arrogant doesn't come from mere genes. It is innate. It is passed on from generation to generation. Do parents teach their kids about it? The answer is yes. Not by telling the kids, but by behavior. You see, we believe more in practical training. People who do not belong to this city are always bothered by this fact.

And yet again, inspite of all this, Pune bagged the title of most livable city in India for the second time in a row!

Big black lady, in a big beautiful city!

Well, let's just say it's been a while that I felt something so strong that I write about it. But this is not just a feeling. It is much more than that. It is an effort to find myself. Something that just connects to me. Something that has changed me and always will, and always for the good. The city of brutal truths and brutally true people, PUNE!

Being a true Punekar at heart, my love for this city has seen no boundaries. No amount of heat, rain, cold or chaos is going to change that. What makes this city so special? Well, nothing in abundance, but everything in moderation. Where you may not feel at home, but you will certainly not feel alone. Where you may not get help in the middle of the road, but you are certainly protected in an utmost need. A city with a heart not of gold, but of stone. Because sometimes you don't need to outshine the world, sometimes you just need to stand strong and mark your way into it.

P.S. - Been a long time that I was here. Just a small attempt  to get back to... Myself!

Making Happy

Yes being happy starts with making ourselves happy. But sometimes making the other person happy is what gives us peace. What people don't understand is that some people draw their energy from them and that one moment when their motivation source shuts down, it becomes difficult for them to even exist. They give a sense of belonging to others. Like a guiding star. We feel lost without them. Broken as well. We don't need to renew ourselves. Just need them to pull us back and patch us together. Ofcourse it is not right to put everything in other person's hands, but sometimes that is exactly someone needs to receive and that is precisely what someone wants to give. Letting someone help us doesn't make you less in any way. All it does is empower us with an extra pack of subliminal energy. Everybody needs it!!

The Beginning!

What is it that changes your core? Some experience, some tragedy, some situation or some incident. Well, there is one more. A person! He unravels that side of you which you don't know about yourself. He answers the questions which you didn't ask. Over the years you develop yourself in a particular way and suddenly that one person walks into your life, unveils a new side of you. So when you look into that mirror you see someone new. Someone whom you might love or hate. I don't know what he gave me or what he took away but this is just too new for me. Beginnings are scary as hell and I know that the endings are sad, but I am hoping to embark on this new journey to know what happens in between these two. I always wanted to have someone who will look at me as if he is falling in love with me for the first time. I wanted someone who will laugh on my silliest of jokes. I wanted someone with whom I can share all my secrets and who wouldn't judge me. Someone who will make me feel that life has just begun! Well, one more revelation, that someone needn't always be your partner or husband. It can be a friend, best-friend. There are some relations which are closer than any other. You know that you love that person but like they say not all love stories get a happy ending. No confessions, only thoughts and realisations!!

Leaving a mark!

Some people come into your life to make it better, some come to make it worse. But some come and never leave, they stay in your heart. They stay as a hope or a dream. It's painful to see a hope turn into a dream which cannot come true. The long talks' memories haunt your nights even more. Mornings scare you because mirrors show you those hurting red eyes. This is the time when you cry in a crowd and laugh in loneliness. The lonesome laugh is a helpless cry, a cry that only you can hear. There are these times when you can feel the breaking of that little thread in your heart, never to be mended again. You feel incomplete if you smile. You feel naked when you laugh. Because these are the emotions which connected you to that person, the person who never left. They say you never know how strong you are until that is the only choice left. But they never understood that you may not want to be strong. May be you need that one person to make everything else go weak and insignificant. You need that person to fight for you and make it through the night like a dying lamp. You need that person to hold your hand tight and look you deep in the eye and say, 'not letting go!'

People Go.... Memories Don't!

There is always that one time when you fall in love with a person in just mere minutes of talking to them and you love yourself because of that feeling. You feel like looking at yourself the way they look at you. You want to see your own world with their eyes. But sometimes these people disappear in the moment and to never return. We feel heartbroken and shattered but you are still somewhere happy that it happened to you, that they happened to you! You have a lot of people who just come and go in your life which don't mean anything to you. Sometimes the people who are there in your life for years don't mean anything to you. But there is that one person who comes and never leaves. They don't leave from your heart, never from your soul. No matter what happens, nobody can make you forget them. Not the stars, the moon and the sun. It just hurts when something in far away universe decide your destiny. And something that was in your heart goes into a shell never to be broken. You feel a need to cry but you can't. You feel a need to scream at someone up there but you can't and that's destiny. You can write your destiny but you can't write your own feelings. That's the epitome of irony. We decide to smile for others but you can't smile even for yourself. Irony playing it hard with your feelings!

The Complicated Simple!

You feel a need to laugh, when you can't. You feel a need to express when you have to hide. You do something that makes you sad just because there is something pushing you to do it. My heart cries for something that was never mine. I feel homesick for a place I have never ever been to. I miss the laughaholic me. I miss being crazily in love with myself and with someone who would do weird things I did once.

I don’t have bones, I have curves. I don't have bruises, I have scars which I have earned and well deserved. I have a past, which has taught me a lot of things and has made me as strong. Some people love me for something and some hate for the same things. I have done well and I have made mistakes. I love curling in bed on a lazy day and not have a bath and only eat. I love working hard for getting the things I want in life. I am random and crazy and moody. 

But I am me. I don’t regret anything in my life. I don’t pretend to be someone I am not. I make no apologies for who I am. If I love you, I’ll do it with all my heart and soul into it. I won’t change the good me for anyone. I would do anything in the world for those people and will make them stay the last mile as well. 

What if you feel bad for a mistake you never made? What if someone judges you for something that you can't even think about doing? What if things get dark when you were just looking at the bright? You need answers. You need justifications. You need clarifications. But what if you are the only one left to do that?

The Emotionless!

He looks at me with those eyes full of dreams. He never saw those dreams himself, just made me see them with a bright hope. The things I always looked for all gathered in his one glance. The sweet torture that life taught me seemed like a pleasant peck on my cheek when it came from him. The hug, so tight yet so warm was life a butterfly kiss. 

But that one day changed it all. Like a dark gloomy day in the Indian summer. The time flew so fast. I thought all I was with is that one drop of the tear. The nights turned themselves from his dreams to his memories. The day filled itself with all the ignorance to the obvious. We spoke to each other with questions. We looked at each other with shattered lives. What went wrong was the question in my heart and what went right was in his. He never answered my question and never asked one himself. 

I thought I was the happiest with him. With all the moments we shared, the one in the mystic place seemed to top it all. The things that I did not feel when he was around were increasingly becoming my soulmates when he was gone. The feelings that went running down my smile were running down my tears.

We became acquaintances, we became friends, we became friends for life and departed as strangers for eternity. Neither of us wanted it but none of us stopped it too. Now here we stand, him looking at a different hope and me looking at a shattered self asking myself the same old question... What went wrong?

The Singing Silence

All that was happening, she felt different. It's like she had not known herself for almost all her life. It is wrong to expect someone to understand her completely but was it so hard to even try... The silent roar of her heart was making her weak. For once she had thought she was worth. For once she thought that the so called magical words exist. All that she was looking for was a hand holding her's telling her to just be... Telling her the truths of life with a smile. She smiled back to him and to herself in a belief that atleast now she will 'live'. But all that came down like a house of cards on a seashore. And then she found herself standing on that cliff again... where there was no one around, not even the silence!

Something called...Mixed Emotions!

So, knowing myself, I am still confused as to whether this is the right thing that has happened to me. It felt while I made the decision but soon after the supposed life started, it felt like this might not be it. Whether to go back to nothing or stay with something for a while if the question. You know you have those strange jitters in your stomach when you know the awkward silence before a huge burst out. The feeling of trapped is very irritating but the feeling of being on your own & finding things that suit you is also not that great.

Why is it so that the things that you like doing often don't give you any kind of motivation. See I know people who believe their hobbies shouldn't be their careers, which I think makes sense if we look for logic. I mean if you have a hobby you might as well do it in your free time just to get over the work issues & frustrations. I don't know why on earth I don't have such kind of hobbies. Anyway, what I am still wondering is, why didn't I all the things through before taking the leap.

Assuming things is okay till some extent but going far away from the reality can be very demotivating at the end. The expectations you have from your life & future are not fulfilled and then we blame the destiny. I think this applies to our personal & professional life as well. If we keep our expectations limited to only our own behavior then you go through a lot lesser pain because every human has a distinctive capacity to forgive themselves very easily, but not others. So, I am going to forgive myself for whatever expectations I had from myself which I didn't fulfill. After all, I don't think I am sane enough to know what I really want!

SCARILY AMAZING!

          I have no clue as to what I am feeling these days. May be it's the feeling of growing up or just plain moving ahead in life. What comes as a surprise to me is the amount of excitement I have when I work. They used to say that you should have some passion in life. Can't that passion be your work or even the workplace? I used to talk about the motivations we have at our offices. It still stands true for me today. I do have a lot of motivations to come to this place called office and go through the day. It's funny to know how I got so used to this place. It seems like I have been working here for all my life. They say I have gelled with the people here very smoothly. Even I think so but knowing myself, I will soon start to feel that people are just putting up the act of being nice.         


           What if people don't like me? What is they are just nice to my face? Why am I bothered by that? Why is it affecting me so much? I don't want to be the person about whom people like to gossip more than talking to them. You know the amount of laughs I have had in this place is not even funny. But still it feels like this might not be the ultimate good thing that has happened to me. There is nothing on my mind as to what next but I am surely not at a stand still corner. This feels more like a stepping stone, which every job is but I am going through such a dilemma where I love this place & people but I am still hoping for something better. Its strange to be in this state of mind. I feel scared, excited, frustrated, blurry, sad, happy all at the same time.

Path that leads.... SOMEWHERE!

     Ever wondered why things are mysteriously stable in your life sometimes? What happens when you are not able to differentiate between the calmness and the numbness? Things happen for a reason they say. But sometimes the reason is something that you wish wouldn't have been there. The innocent girl, who likes to smile, thinks that the one small thing that makes her smile is missing somewhere, the heart. That someone who used to make her feel special now makes her feel, well, ordinary! Pestering her with some ridiculous questions about her existence in his life. And then when she actually starts thinking about that, the complaints about why things are not normal is the question.

     When things go bizarre, people try and judge you by your commitment issues. But do they know what the people, her or him, go through when they took the decision. No matter how much we say, we always judge the book by its cover. It’s always good to look at the cover closely before you start reading it right! While turning 25, I think I have gained not much, but a little more perspective to what I really want from life. And since the things that I want are not really far fetched, I still don’t know the path leading to them!

Priorities...

Okay so what should you do when the decision you took keeping in mind someone's happiness and then realize they are not and will not do the same for you? Turn back the decision? Go down the same road? Or just stay there doing nothing and drown yourself in the pit of shame, disappointment and hurt?

Contemplation...

So I thought I was doing the right thing. Atleast I had the satisfaction of taking my own decisions and shape things as I want. But then why the disappointment? Why the regret and why the fear of losing something beautiful that has happened to me. Who was real me now I wasn't sure. The strong confident person who was back then was that just a illusion or the sad, skeptic and uncertain person inside me right now is the victim of the situation? Questions!! My mind was twirling around the same fear over and over again. Was it telling me to overcome my fears? If it was then why is it so that I am still not able to figure somethings out. People say that deciding something for yourself is easy because you know yourself the best. Then why am I different these days. I used to be a girl who knew what she wanted. I used to be a girl with a stong will. I used to love myself for whatever I did. I used to be just ME! Disappearance of your real self is the most embarrasing thing. And the most shamefull moment is when you look in that small mirror somewhere and suddenly realize that this isn't the same person I was in love with. What to do and how to do it is the "question" we all have been dealing with. The same question pesters me day in and day out. How?? When?? What??!!!

Confused!!

Okay so the choices we make in life are all suppose to make us feel independent and confident. If you make a choice to go out on a little drive on your own and meet with an accident you still don't blame anybody else. But then why is it so that the most crucial choices of your life, which are suppose to make you feel a lot more alive, make you feel a lot more dead inside. With all the hope, fear, anxiety I had taken a jump into this whole wide world of fire. I knew I was up for it. So did my dear ones. But then why is it so that a small terrified girl in me is telling me to take a different route altogether. If I listen to her, the strong, confident independent girl in me is going to get a major ego setback. And if I don't she is never going to trust me again. Ah the dilemma and the pressure. Both building stronger by the day!

Understanding myself!

The more we try to understand our feelings and emotions the more we get to learn new things our-self. We need to be very honest with our feelings. There is no great advice given by a friend, parent, guide, godmother anyone rather than your own heart. Honestly, I miss those days when I use to be on my own for my emotional needs. That was the time when I was all sorted out in my head. Since the time I am back with so called my people, it has increased the amount I get angry, sad, tensed, frustrated and a lot more for which I don't even have words. What is this? Why does this happen? If you love someone then living with them and living with their personalities should be so damn easy. Then why does it have to be so hard to manage these people who claim to be your best. Okay, so about friends. Those who are closer to you suddenly seem so far and those who just came along a few days back seem to be very much close. Does this happen to everyone or its just something that I am doing wrong here. I want to have someone with whom I can pour my heart out and tell all my secrets, my stories. That someone who will not judge me with my long stories and dirty secrets. People like it when we call them our friends but then what happens when that"friend" in them is needed. That time its all about how we are wrong and the expectations go way beyond limit. Trust! whom?why?when?how?!!!!!!