echo

hello?
ello
llo
lo
o


this is deader than dead isn't it?

on living a fraction of a life

It’s like a shadow.  

The constant threatening presence, somewhere beneath the surface, of the depression, my depression, for it sometimes feels like a parasitic pet that I have welcomed grudgingly into my home. It's always, always there, waiting for the tiniest crack or fissure in me, in my demeanor, in my shell. So it can ooze out and consume my being.

Is this how it will be? Forever? An unnamed, faceless monster that lives within, ready to pounce out at a moment’s notice, sitting skulking in a corner when I'm happy, resentful like a petulant child. Begrudging me every moment of joy. Raising its head, hopefully sniffing the air when things start to go wrong, when insecurities and doubts and let-downs, hell when life gets in the way of things, when the hay cart you're so merrily rolling down on suddenly hits a pothole, and things come to a shuddering, sudden halt; that's when it comes joyously bounding up to tear and claw at your insides, demanding to be let out. 

And let it out you do, because you're too defenseless, too weak to hold it back, because you've all but given up fighting. And once it’s out there, once it's no longer caged, it celebrates its freedom by embracing you like an old friend; with no intentions of ever letting go.

You give into it. You withdraw further into yourself until you're reduced to a fraction of yourself, until only a faint glimmer of the person you used to be is visible.

It takes over your entire life. Your interactions with people, your habits, your attitude. Responsibilities and relationships and carefully constructed frameworks for the life you could have all break down, for they are new, made from fresh bamboo shoots, and not strong young trunks like those of others your age. Tentatively put there by you, held together by flimsy gossamer thread. 

But fragile; so, so fragile.

It starts living your life for you. You are the puppet; it holds the strings.

So you recede. There is a place, somewhere deep inside of your own self, a tiny place, where you can withdraw and be safe, lock all doors, shutter yourself out. Be sad all you want in there, cry your eyes out, be fucking devastated and torn up for no reason. No one will care. No one will give a shit. 

You tire yourself out eventually, and then your emotions start cutting off one by one. It’s like in James and the giant peach, when they want to drop the peach a little bit, they cut the cord to one of the many seagulls keeping them afloat. And the peach drops just a tiny bit, and this is how they control the pattern of their flight. 

You’re like the peach. Except you're hitting rock bottom much faster, and you cannot exactly comprehend what's happening. Because you've stopped caring. You've stopped feeling. You react to terrible news and happy news and heart wrenching news the same way, the only way you know how: with stone faced stoicism. You actually have to consciously mold your face into the appropriate expressions whenever around people, have to actively remind yourself to punctuate conversations with nods and hums and hahs. 

You become adept at pretending, and you resign yourself to this life.

Things are pretty much fucked. Everything is pointless. Nothing matters.

I don't remember exactly what it was that brought me out. I was under for such a long time that I sometimes fear I'll never be able to fully function again, and when I sometimes relapse for a day or two or three, I am honestly scared out of my fucking mind of how bad it can get. I never want to go back there again. This is not how life is supposed to be lived.

I don't have it all figured out. I don't know how it is that life ought to be lived, but I'm trying, I'm trying the best that I can to stay afloat. I just hope... I just hope that there are a few buoys around to help me, just in case.

I watched a film the other day, a film called 'detachment'. There was a lot of Adrian Brody face staring with melancholy eyes at the camera, saying profound sad things. But there was one thing he said that really hit home.

That helplessness, that realization, that foreboding of being adrift in a sea with no buoy, no safety net when you thought you'd be the one throwing the buoy . . .

Really though. When did it all become so utterly, unfix-ably fucked. I was supposed to have this figured out.

Wait.

standstill

Sometimes you feel like pouring the contents of your heart out in their entirety; 

tendinous cords and all

just letting it all out and not care, for once, about the many many walls you have carefully constructed, not care about the spikes running along their tops or the deep trenches at the bottom, not care at all and 

just get past it all in one giant brave leap of faith.

There are some people you want to make the jump for. Some people your heart tells you you can trust fully wholeheartedly completely 

without any doubts 

at all.

But still the tiny voice at the back of your head bugs you, still it tells you to be wary. 

surely this cannot end well. It's just not possible. 

So you retreat into your shell.

And then

at the end of it all, it’s you again. 

you with your thoughts and your crippling self-doubts and fears and insecurities

you with your meticulously erected barriers

you with the invisible hand crushing around your heart, squeezing and squeezing and squeezing until it goes squidge between the fingers and turns into a mess.

just you 

alone.

brambles

A smile plays at the edge of his lips. He looks at her all tired eyed; all wisdom and experience and lack of sleep, and decides not to say anything. 

He is absentmindedly playing with a strand of her hair. Twirling it around his long fingers, letting it go again. 

She hates it when he does this. Hates it when he shuts himself out completely. She knows he’s not there. He may be able to fool others with his well-timed nods and smiles, his perfunctory words of greeting, his seemingly nonchalant demeanor, but she knows. She knows that even when listening to her talk he is off somewhere else, in his own little world, getting repeatedly assaulted by unpleasant thoughts that will not leave him alone. She hates how vast amounts of prodding would only produce a meager ‘Me? Oh I’ll be fine by tomorrow, just need to get my head screwed on straight… look at you, worrying about silly old ME, of all people!’. And then he’d proceed to attack her with wiggling fingers, tickling relentlessly until she breathlessly begged for mercy. 

She doesn’t like it when he does that. 

Laugh it off like it’s nothing, when she knows it’s eating him up from the inside, that he’s going absolutely stark raving mad thinking about it. Not that she would be of much practical help, not really… but she’d be there. And maybe, just maybe, he’d realize that sometimes that was all that was needed, that was all that helped.

har dil jo pyar karega woh khana khaye ga.

About two months ago, we had to give our juniors a welcome party, as all senior classes must. Twas quite a nice one too; we had a rather good time ridiculing them as much as possible without being criminally offensive while they sat there looking sad... And the food, oh what lovely food was had! 

*cue rapturous music*

The leftovers were seen being furtively carted off to the male hostel once the thing was over, and I waved goodbye to them as they passed by, for I knew no one would see or hear from them again.

But wait! The next day my friend and I espy one of our girls walking about with a little plate full of kababs. Kababs that look suspiciously like the ones I had so mournfully bid adieu to the night before. I am flabbergasted and I am bamboozled. 

'What!' I ask her. 'But where! But how!'

It turns out her boy had brought her the food. How sweet of him.

I turn to my friend and a conclusion is wordlessly, simultaneously reached, a very important one at that:

Scene on kar lo. Kabab milein ge.

Anything for food.

(cake like) inconsistency

I fear that this may be one of those nights that are spent embroiled in existential crises and extensive cleaning of rooms and laundering of clothes, nights spent rooting out chips wrappers and empty juiceboxes from corners and crevices and filling up garbage bags, nights that end with a nice shower and an intense need to sleep for the longest time possible. The latter part will not be possible though I fear, for classes are to be had in the morning and studying has to be done; for this, this utter beghairati, can go on no more.

your orange peels have fallen

(a precarious tower in flames

cemented with seeds and

white, lacy, membrane)