|Tales to Tell: #Collected|

Writer: Anonymous

I was twelve years old when my mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia, more specifically, paranoid schizophrenia. For those of you who are unaware, schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental disorder characterized by distortions in thinking, perception, emotions, language, sense of self and behaviour. Common experiences include hallucinations – hearing voices or seeing things that are not there and delusions.

Here’s the thing about schizophrenia – it’s like a parasite; it slowly takes over the brain, feeds on its thoughts, hopes, dreams and fears and then, when it is powerful enough, its tentacles wrap around the person so tightly and consumes them so completely that before you know it, the person you loved is gone.

Initially, when the symptoms started to appear, my father and I almost gave into her delusions. We strained our ears and tried to hear the voices she kept talking about but we heard nothing. There was only silence. That’s when we realized that something was terribly wrong.

She was diagnosed a few months later and put on medication. But like most patients with schizophrenia, my mother refused to continue with her treatment and that’s when things took turn for the worse. The voices in her head grew louder, and everyone was out to get her.

I was instructed by all the adults in my family, including my father, to not talk about it outside my house. “Don’t mention this to your friends”– they said. It became the family secret.

So why am I talking about it now?

Schizophrenia didn’t just take my mother – it took a lot more. It cost me a normal relationship with my mother. It took away my chance at having an ordinary childhood. For years I was plagued with guilt, shame and loneliness. I coped with it the only way I knew I could, by repressing the bad memories and numbing the pain to distract myself from the sadness. Soon, it started affecting my mental health.

Five years ago I realized that I didn’t need to suffer in silence; that it was okay to talk about my experience. It was difficult but eventually I started confiding in my close friends and that actually helped.

If you are going through a similar experience, I hope this post helps you and makes you feel a little less alone in your struggle against this vicious illness.

If you know someone who is going through this – talk to them. Don’t offer them your sympathy. Don’t tell them things like “I am sorry that you have to go through this” – the last thing they need is pity. Just ask them how they are doing; they will probably say they are doing great and that’s a lie but ask them regardless. You can’t fix them or take away their pain but you can at least show them that you are there for them when they need you. A little compassion and empathy goes a long way.

As for me, I am still learning to deal with my issues, every single day. But now I have also learned to ask for help and that has made all the difference.

I had a dream…

Picture Caption –

I had a dream

Of a beautiful gate

Covered in bright fuchsia flowers

And then…

they were no more,

the gate had rusted

and I was withered and wasted.

This afternoon I had a dream.
I was a child
and my room was full of light.
The underneath of my bed was clear
and my mother was humming a song,
it’s a pretty day,
we never have to leave.
There were so many books stacked by my bed.
She picked one up to read to me.
And then she looked up at the clock
it had to go one full round.

And then…

I was a girl,
and the sunlight had begun to feel too hot in my room.
The underneath of my bed
had but one skeleton
with a blue hair band on her head.
And in the radio there was a song,
Oh a sunny morn!
What a day for a beach party.
The books on my bedside were gathering dust.
But I picked up my mascara
and I looked up at the clock,
it had gone but only a quarter.

And then…

I was a lady.
Or, was I?
The room was filtered sepia
and the underneath of my bed
had gathered a few skeletons –
there was my mother and my unresolved issues with her,
my lover with his wristband,
and the lover before that.
The girl with the blue hair band was almost gone,
turned to dust.
And Alexa was playing me a song,
Afternoon had turn to pass,
nothing seems to ever last.
The books by my bed had outgrown that table,
and the clock had gone half a round.

And then…

My hair was a nice mix of gray.
Was I old?
The insides of my room glittered in the fading sun,
and the underneath of my bed had gathered a few more skeletons.
One wearing my father’s wrist watch,
one wearing a wedding band
the other half of which still remains in my hand.
And the sensory device was playing a song in sync with my mood,
In all the hours of the day
have you noticed,
the evening takes the longest to pass
through its ever changing crimson array.
And then the device rang shrill…
It was all but a quarter left.

And then…

I was a child again,
fragile and without teeth.
But my body seemed to heavily ache.
And it was a noir for there was no light
across my window pane.
And I could no longer look under my bed,
but I think they had all crumbled to dust.
And the screen across my bedside
kept playing a constant tune,
A beep, a beep, a longer beep.
And I think someone’s phone rang,
or was it mine?
You have at long last come home
in the midst of night,
I have stood waiting
an eternity…
And the stories in the books by my bed
had all lived as a part of me.
The doctor walked in
and said it was done,
the clock had gone its full round.
He recorded the time
00:01.

Making Poetry Together.

:Throwback series: December of 2015.

Let us make poetry together.
Let us drop letters at each other’s apartments and have a rendezvous in a dark alley.
Let us meet there with pens and papers.

Let us kiss first. One alphabet at a time.
Let us kiss each alphabet of our names before we start undressing each other layer after layer.
Then let us take a moment to breathe.
Let us wait for our hearts to calm down.
For the pounding to get back to the normal and then let us again look at each other.

Let us scribble the first word on the paper.
I scribble my word on yours and you on mine.
Let us soak that word with our lips.
Let the adrenaline take over.
Let another word out. And then another.
Let us exchange the papers now.
Take another moment. Let the words sink in.
Let the lips meet the words and let the paper soak.
A stanza has been created.

Now there is more urge.
An urge to know and explore.
To undress and to uncover.
Let us look back at each other and start again.
This time a little harder and rampant.
A little brutal and a little wild.
The pounding of the heart is audible now.
The words feel wet. There is drive and passion.
The hands move a little faster and the fingers press a little harder.
The paper is scorching now. Almost perspiring. Out of breath, we stop.
Let us allow ourselves a small laugh. Like a cackle and let us get back to kissing. We just have not had enough.

But we are naked now.
All the words have been poured out.
They lie in chaos.
Let our eyes meet each other’s.
Let us take in the silent approval and grab the paper.
Let us become cannibals now.
Cut the body and eat the flesh.
Quench the thirst with the blood.
Let each vein rip and let the blood splash out.
Let it cover our faces and let us not stop till it is over.
Let us not stop till every feeling has been rinsed out of the heart.
Let us not stop till our pens become ink-less.

Now let us look at each other’s art.
Every sensation penned down on that blooded paper.
Let the adrenaline reside.
Let the satisfaction call it a night.
Now let us gaze back at each other and let our lips meet.
Let the poetry we made together come to life.

Picture Caption: Dark alleys, made less darker and more beautiful with lovers in embrace,

With words and love-song daze.

Dear Son. (throwback series)

(This is a throwback series, I had written them and uploaded them here and there but now, I thought it was time, to compile them and study my growth. As a writer, a person. Most people don’t know this, but I have been writing since my 10th standard and had written my first blog post in 2015. Having never been popular most of them have gone unread. Anyway. Here’s the first of the throwback series written sometime in the December of 2015.
Dislaimer: Please don’t throw shade. At present, I, myself do not agree with everything I had written for I have grown and changed but I didn’t want to edit my thoughts as that would be a duplicitous way to chart my growth. Thank you.)

Dear Son,
When I was 16, I was really beautiful. I was wild and young and free. I made decisions and unmade them. Made promises and broke them. Made love and broke hearts. I never let anybody grow close enough to me. I was not made to be confined. I was born to be free.

So many boys wooed me. Silly boys, I tell you. After I crushed their hearts I even heard them make jokes about me to their friends and funnily enough, the very next day, another lad from that very group would approach me. I went out with them. Almost all of them. Told them the same stories about how I loved being free and about how I despised seriousness. It almost didn’t matter to them. None of them ever tried to make me stay. None. After a few days. I’d tell them I was bored and they left.

Then I turned 18. A few things changed. The sitting and talking in park benches changed to slightly dark alleys or empty classrooms. There were conversations and kisses. But those kisses almost meant nothing to me. They were a part of my freedom. My exploration. I broke so many hearts but the boys never gave up on wooing me and I never questioned why. I never did wonder why they’d still want to date me when all I wanted was nothing with them.

By the time I was 21, I had slept with quite a few men. They fulfilled my needs and I fulfilled theirs. Honestly, I never did feel immoral. I just did that because that made me feel like I was making my choices and handling them well. And men still continued to intrigue me. They seemed to love the one week flings. I don’t blame them. I loved them too. There were no attachments. I was free. No confinements.

When I was 25 I met your father. It was very regular. One Friday night he offered to buy me coffee after I returned his wallet that fell from his pocket while pulling out his handkerchief to show a little kid a tiny trick. That mug of coffee led to another mug of coffee and to months of mugs of coffees. After about three months of just going on coffee dates, I figured he wanted to stay. Mind you, your father was the only boy in my ever so colourful life that volunteered to stay. Years passed and many of the happiest things in my life happened. I got a job, I got married, you happened and I thought my life had been finally sorted. But a quest for something can be a bad thing.

Today you are 9 and I don’t expect you to understand all this. I don’t even want you to read this now but when you do please understand my abandoning you was not a choice. I was not made for this. I don’t want to cheat on you or your father. But I want to be free again. I want to go and explore. And I want you never to become like your mother. Be the man your father was to your mother but find a woman who isn’t driven by a quest or a thirst because they cannot be contained. Not forever at least. And dare you not believe in relationships. They happen all the time.

When you are 16 and brimming with handsomeness, remember who your mother wanted you to be and you will make the right decisions.

Love,
Mother.

My Puke Puddle.

No, do not stumble upon my puke puddle.
Just walk around it,
or jump over it.
Do not cringe
or frown
or squint ever so slightly
using all the control to resist making that judgement;
you do not get a say.
This indigestion,
the concoction you see, is a multitude of feelings;
my multitudinous feelings.
The red you see from the beet root soup
is anger from shallow politics,
the lust of ambition,
unfathomable passion,
unrequited love,
a death drive.
The green from the spinach
is envy
of another’s success
of another’s family
of another’s life.
The yellow from the turmeric
is the positivity
that I cannot process internally,
the joy I no longer feel,
the optimism that no longer exists.
The white grains of rice
peeping through,
they pine for purity,
for a cleansing –
a longing for peace.
And then there is the black!
The black of the
scattered specks of, what, rotten cumin seeds?
A glimpse of the evil I house within.
An aggressive pacification to contain within me
a dark storm or rebellion,
or is it just a peak
into the absence, into a non existence,
into the abysmal nothingness.
Also, the chunks here and there.
Small chunks of compliments
complemented by a slightly larger portion
of bad faith shared about me in confidence.

So, do not stumble upon my puke puddle
if you cannot walk around it
or jump over it.
This indigestion,
this unholy sight
this reeking melange
is my insufferable reality.

Picture caption: Tangled, entangled.

Entwined, intertwined.

Feeling, unfeeling.

Never Enough.

You wake up one morning and you feel weighed down.
You know the things in your life are not enough.
You call up a friend, she endows you with positive vibes.
You like it, you want to believe it, but that’s not enough.
You look at your table and there is a stack of unread books, they thrill you.
You want to read them.
But then you have to log in to your Facebook feed before you start your day and you see a check in of a certain person going on a solo trip or a vacay.
And now you want that.
You are tired of your books and TV shows.
You need money for a holiday.
You finally convince yourself to watch a TV show.
You start with Bojack Horseman.
Great choice, i must say.
You watch an episode about Bojack thinking about how it is never enough and Diane agreeing to the feeling and promising herself to change, to work hard and never complain.
You are inspired now and you wish to do the same.
You enter the kitchen and decide to cook and you are so proud of yourself but suddenly you realise you have nothing to wear tomorrow and again it is never enough.
You start working hard and hoping that someday it will all be fine and that someday it will be enough.
Days pass, months pass, and then a certain festival occurs.
You realise you don’t have enough money or friends or clothes.
But you live on with that too and suddenly it’s examination time and you realise your half baked knowledge isn’t enough. You are dumb and never the best and you are clearly not enough.
And that someday fades into a distance…

Years pass.
You have bought the clothes you’ve wanted to.
You have married the lover you never thought you would have.
You have a good life.
You have traveled.
You have given birth to beautiful children or have adopted adorable animals.
Your house is full of love and support.
Your someday is here.
And then you wake up one day, you look at your Facebook feed and your colleague has won an award you think you deserved and you roll back to not being enough.
You are never going to be enough.

Picture: Random frame of the setting sun metaphorically signifying how we are never satisfied with darkness or light,winter or summer,happiness or sadness. Never enough.

“A tower,every hour.”

As a 90’s kid, I spent most of my Springs
watching birds
collect straws
for their nests.
Springs now are humid, clammy, rainy
and quite bird-free
because we need “a tower, every hour.”

As a 90’s kid, so much of my rural visits were about
ponds and ducks in the ponds
and swans and some more ponds.
Now, those ponds house concretes,
those ducks dead to the ground.
Probably eaten,
and we need “a tower, every hour.”

As a 90’s kid, my zoo visits
had at least one mandatory story about some wild predator,
especially some mean lion or tiger,
and their attack on civilians or poachers.
Now, tigers are endangered
with ninety seven percent of their population wiped out,
but we need “a tower, every hour”

As a 90’s kid, I watched Jaws
and was terrified and fascinated
by the sheer size and magnanimity of the shark.
And now…
A “dead shark washes ashore, neck bound with plastic.”
A dead whale had “40kg plastic in its stomach.”
C’mon, we do need “a tower, every hour.”

As a 90’s kid, I went to the University in the late 2010s
and I had written a piece on a little bird in my first year there.
Guess what?
The little bird doesn’t live there any longer,
neither does so many other birds.
Migratory birds have stopped visiting.
God knows if they are still living or have gone extinct.
Little sparrows no longer frequent
pecking on the glass of my window.
Even then we need “a tower, every hour.”

We need our Starbucks plastic cups for #igstarbucks.
We need our air conditioners and coolers and heaters.
We need our fancy beach straws with a sliced lemon on top.
We need over indulging shopping paradises and top notch housing concretes.
We need our internets and WiFis.
We all need (maybe, should be guilty of?) “a tower, every hour.”

Picture Caption:

Go go fly away,
to a home to know
to a home you own.
Greedy homo sapiens shall know your worth,
once they have reaped the benefits
of the last seeds sown.

(Picture taken from a friend, Sayanti Bose’s, collection.

Irrelevance: #thingstheydonottellyouaboutmediocrity.

You see, you do not acquire mediocrity.
You are born into it and it keeps changing
with your social surroundings.
As a child, they do not call you mediocre
because there is hope for you yet.
As an adult, they do not give your mediocrity credibility
because there is ‘apparently’ hope for you still.

Being average comes with an unspoken terms and conditions manual.
Yes, the ones you never read on any forms or instructions.
Like those.
These conditions being:
“You are good enough in the right crowd.”
“You might not be the best, but you are not bad.”
“You can always get better.”

But like those unread manuals
you are not much good either.
Yes, you exist.
You take up air and space.
You are matter.
But do you really matter?

With the right amount of ideas and exposure
and around the right people
you will get recognised as the underdog
who will make everybody proud someday.
But, not today.

You will have Academy nominated movies after you,
“the year of the underdogs”, people will say-
just with the right amount of luck and hard work,
at the right time, around the right people,
with the correct alignment of stars
correct colour of clothes, shampoo and soap
those movie people make it,
and so will you, if you believe.

And let me tell you something about your dreams,
the dreams you saw as a child because everyone assured you
you had just enough to achieve them,
well, what they meant was you had just enough
not in surplus and dreams weren’t all for you.
Not entirely at least.
You would make it in alternative options-
tinier jobs, tinier homes, tinier dreams.
They are still all you want
What is the harm?

The crudest thing they do not tell you about mediocrity is that
you are not a nebula of brilliance,
who hasn’t yet stumbled upon the right opportunity at the right time and space.
You are not a ball of insecurity afraid of fading into irrelevance
You are the irrelevance.
Until you make it.
If you make it.
Or else you fade into the nothingness you came from,
were always a part of.

Your irrelevance.

Caption: The sun fades.
Gradually…
From a brilliant yellow to an orange to a residual red.
Leaving behind at first a tint, a slow transitioning
And then a sudden all conquering darkness

The sun fades, into temporary irrelevance.
The sun isn’t the irrelevance.
Because the sun is mediocre, cannot be mediocre
am I right?

Tales to Tell: Nostalgia

My Grandmother. Circa – At least 35-40 years before I was born.

I have particularly always wondered about women’s clothing in my country, my city before the 70s. Did they only drape a saree? I don’t know. I hear different versions of it.

This specific picture surfaced or rather came to my knowledge at the time of my maternal grandmother’s funeral. Yes, this is my grandmother when she was probably around my age. This was the first and one of the only times she wore a salwar kameez, which she conveniently wore on a trip because “বাড়ীর বউদের শাড়ী পরলে মানায়ে” ( saanskari home makers or women who stay at home look better in sarees) and my maternal uncle clicked this picture on his newly bought camera ( he has always been quite the family photographer and the little of these pictures that exist happened only because of his enthusiasm). She was educated but definitely not as much as she’d like to be. She was married off to my grandfather who was himself a young man newly recruited to our budding banking system.

From the little I have seen (though I am not the most reliable source here because I was born at a time when she was slowly starting to lose her glory to age) and from the stories I have heard from my maternal aunt and my father, she had been the matriarch figure in her days. She didn’t quite have a world outside, but in her home, which she built from scratch, it was her territory. She was the lioness who thought she knew exactly what her children needed and she went with it. But these glorious times are not what I can vouch for. The grandmother I knew, only knew love and compassion.

Being the younger daughter of her youngest child, I have always only just been pampered by her. She was so proud of everything I did. She was proud when I laughed, cried, read a book, fell asleep on my own, anything. She was just proud of me. Of all her granddaughters in fact. When I was young, I used to spend a lot of my vacations with her, most of which were spent just sitting beside her and watching her cook things for me. She made লুচি for breakfast, and there had to be some sweets to go with it. She didn’t much care if I wanted to eat them or not because for her I always looked thinner than the last time. Then she would prepare a delicious meal for lunch. And within hours of having my lunch, she would offer me snacks to munch on or an orange (if it was winter) while we sat on the terrace and she told me stories or asked me questions. Then by the time it was 6 (which is tea-time), she would make a thick strong cup of tea with a frothy creamy layer on top. She would give me 6 biscuits because anything less is nothing at all and with that she would fry me some puff rice or some tell my uncle to get me some snacks from local stalls. Of course all my protests were but in vain and I knew I had to abide by her rules. At around dinner time, she would serve me everything and it was the only time that I wasn’t forced to overeat.

Then she would slowly go upstairs and bathe, even in winter and apply a thick layer of cream or powder depending on the weather and come and lie beside me. After which started my story time. She would tell me one fairy tale after the other. It started with নীল কমল লাল কমল, দুয়ো রানী দুয়ো রানী, and every other দৈত্য দানব tale from ঠাকুমার ঝুলি, very conveniently fitting into the marginal role which life had offered her and she accepted without protests or regrets as did most women her time.

I remember she’d slowly drift into sleep mid story and mostly, I avoided waking her up. I would either count backwards from 500 or make stories in my head moving to sleep to finally realise it is 9 a.m.

I would even sit with her in her ঠাকুর ঘর (altar) while she cleaned and decorated for hours before she finally gave her offerings and prayed. She did everything with a certain poise, with a satisfaction that I can never quite understand. It was as if, this was the best that could have happened to her. She was so satisfied in her chores, in washing, in cleaning, in cooking, in bearing and rearing, in loving, in giving. She never regretted not knowing more, not having studied more. She never expressed any grievances in not having friends, in not having a life outside. She never complained, probably hardly demanded. She was fierce in her own space. She was practical and mature in the decisions she made regarding her home. She was strict with her house help and made sure she got the job done. But she wasn’t ambitious about anything. She didn’t want a lot more than she already had. She always prayed for everybody but herself. All she wanted was good health.

But I cannot look back without wondering why this woman, who had seemingly everything anybody needs, settle. Just simply settle. Was it all her choice? Definitely not. How many women knew the word choice back then? Was it all just conditioning? Maybe. She saw her mother and probably the mother before her so seamlessly fit into these roles, she didn’t know better. Couldn’t do better.

My maternal aunt often tells me, her mother was perfect except she never taught them how to look after themselves; only how to look after others. She taught them sacrifice, sacrifice that could even cost you your dreams because dreams were meant for the males, what can women want apart from a healthy, fertile, fit life with the capacity of looking after her family? I don’t blame her, in fact I look up to her in awe of the person she was, the kindness she exuded, the love she never refused to give.

But she breaks my heart- it breaks my heart to think how she and so many women her age and time and even today go on doing what they are meant to do and not what they want to do. How even today I joke about marriage being a viable option to live my life. No, there is nothing wrong in being married, being a housewife, in wanting kids, in not wanting them, in being anything at all, but the problem is not knowing better. The problem is in how deep rooted it is in our brain. How satisfied we still are with ideas of apparent stability, with the very subtle illusion what we call choice. But is there any really? Yet? I often wonder…