If only

If only you could hold me close to you, if only you could smother me with your embrace, if only you could love me like only you could, if only.

Why am I writing this I do not know, should I be writing this I do not know. I'm going to write it anyway.

For a loved one to die is one thing, to be reason of their death is a whole different league.

There are nights where all I want to do is curl up in a ball and cry, nights that I crave for comfort and cuddles. Tonight is one of those nights.

It amazes me that I still feel the need to be consoled, comforted and cured of nightmares and demons. I've come to learn the only person who can help us feel better is ourselves. And I just read somewhere that it has to be done with utmost compassion. Be kind to yourself.

I think I'm going to babble nonstop. I came across a blog written in tribute for a total stranger, a son, brother, husband, father and an amazing friend and human who touched lives of many, left behind memories for each of them to cherish. Is forty even an age to die? But God knows better. Why else would accidents happen all over the world, robbing wombs, leaving behind widows and orphans?

Death, fascinates me. I wish I could have a heart to heart with Azrael (the angel of death, he's my favorite angel btw. But since last night I have developed a fear for him. A silly fear. I'm scared that he'd be near a soul I love and I wouldn't even sense his presence, not till he's snatched the soul away) ask him about death, how it feels like to be at the giving end and if he knows what it feels like to be at the receiving end to be the one dying.

Reminds me of the lesson we learned in English the title of which went something like "I'm not afraid to die, if we can all die together". No it isn't death most people are afraid of, it is the pain to be endured to be lived with for the rest of their lives after the loss of a loved one.

Cycle.

I looked at the picture that hung on the wall, covered by cobwebs. It is of a middle-aged woman, pleasant faced and plump. Not fat, plump. The kind you would hug over and over again. I've hugged her repeatedly, thought of her as my teddy bear, then hated having hugged her and sometimes regretted not having hugged her enough.

She is my mother. I look nothing like her, except for the nose and the dimple on the right cheek we share nothing. She was beautiful. You would hear yourself say MashaAllah to yourself each time you see her smile or hear her talk or sing in that heart-melting voice of hers. Praising the Creator for adding more beauty in our house in the form of our mother. And because of all this and more we believed our father too was madly in love with her. And she in love with him. For he too was a specimen of beauty and perfection, with his well built physique and deep blue eyes. We all knew that our aunts envied mother, look at their balding husbands with a paunch and look at our father, still young at sturdy even at 45.

To the outside world we were the perfect family. Happy parents, happy children. It was that way for us, till one day mother disappeared. All that remained of her at our home was that picture on the wall of our room, and few old clothes, and books she read a long long time ago. Also a handwritten note addressed to us, her daughters which an older aunt of ours had taken and gotten rid of.

We heard people talk ill of her, the same tongues who praised and thanked her, now didn't want to miss a single chance to slander. "You could identify such women right away. They're unbelievably beautiful, full of life and lust, they don't give up on their hunger and thirst too easily, marrying them off won't help. Having children don't save them either. Poor him, what did he do to deserve a slut like her. We should get him married soon." I bit my lips, my hands till it bled to stop me from crying, whereas my older sisters cried to their hearts' content. The aunts consoled them but they said they were more worried for me, seems I've become a stone, the tragedy has affected me so badly that I can't even cry. My eyes shone with anger each time they offered their sympathies, it was them I had a problem with.

And I knew the relatives will convince father to remarry. "He needs a wife. A good, loyal, virtuous wife to cope with this stress and sadness" they said. I ran around our room, like a caged wild animal, yelling. My sisters seem to agree with father's remarriage. "Cope with shame. Not sadness. The girls need a mother too. Hell, we don't. Screw them." I screamed. I stopped when I heard somebody violently knocking at the door.

"Clean-up" was what my father's sister called it. What she meant was free the house and us of whatever remained of mother in here and inside us. I threw a tantrum when she collected our albums in a pile, poured kerosene and set fire, our parents' wedding album was the last to burn. I felt my insides burn, the taste of charcoal in my mouth, smoke filling my airways, I choked. I wanted to pull my aunt's hair and kick her legs. But what I did was wondrous. With each photo that turned ashes she sang how my mother was a woman full of filth inside out, abandoning her children to be in the arms of another man. She cursed her, swore and I took a step or two closer. True that I wanted to pull her hair but my hands were closed. I punched her in the face. Twice. I had bloody knuckles that I refused to wash till my father threatened me to.

Since then, nobody tried to remove anything from anywhere. And each time they saw me fist my right hand they shielded their noses with both palms and kept a safe distance. They still stuck to blaming mother for the incident, the tragedy made me a violent person. A motherless monster. Many aunts volunteered to tame me, teach me how to behave. Father had other plans.

Tips.

You need to smile more often, bigger.

Eat more cookies, cupcakes, cream pastries. Less coffee.

Stop listening to sad songs.

Sing happy, and dance to it.

Go to the zoo. Throw popcorn at the monkeys.

Watch Twilight, and other lovestories that does the heart and mind good. You'll find hope.

Have faith in the Avengers. Especially, the Hulk.

Avoid watching Titanic when it comes on TV.

Stop eating cookie dough.

Deactivate your facebook. Keep whatsapp though. Never be disloyal to Mark Zuckerburg.

Keep silent about your firstworld problems. Like Ryan Higa says, shut the full cup.

Goodnight.

Her eyes.

I'd plant a tender kiss on your cupid's bow, if you allow me.
I'd tell the world of the oceans you hide behind your eyes, dark blue.
I'd draw your face in the sky, adorn your lush long hair with stars.

And so on she read. Though she pretended to be displeased when he handed the letter, neatly folded blue paper in a white envelope, her heart pounded crazily against her chest. She frowned and asked him to leave. Her friends thought he was too boyish, writing her loveletters every week, he'd write everyday, she knows but they only meet on Saturdays. A brief hello at the park by the fairy fountain.

"Your eyes" he'd say. "They tell me otherwise." He smirked. She was angry, not at him but her eyes, for deceiving her, for giving her away. She was trying hard to convince him she doesn't like him writing her mushy lovey letters, she thought it was silly, Highschool-ish. And their relationship wasn't so. It wasn't about two teenagers having butter knees and butterflies in their tummies. He and her, different as day and night. But it's hard to tell who is day and who is night, who loves black and who loves white, who is dark and who is light. She loved the night and despised the color black, he was like the sun and the moon and loved the former more. She made peace with her inner self and the outsiders and he fought with both.

He in his entire lifetime, 27 years, haven't ever read a line from a Shakespearean play or heard of Pablo Neruda's love sonnets. And she knows many by heart. When she'd quote Rumi or Hafez he'd roll his eyes and talk of racing tracks, adrenaline, bikes, getting high on life. That exactly was why she was surprised when he gave her his first loveletter the first Saturday, five days after they met.

The letter was terrible, she didn't want to tell him that. "How was it?" He asked. "Good" she bit her lip, she didn't want to lie. "But I'd rather you not give it to the girl you like" she didn't want to offend him. And he laughed. Before leaving he gave her another letter. Which he had written right before her.

"Thanks for the advice. But it's too late. The girl I like and her eyes have already seen the letter, read it and decided it was crap. But I promise, if she is too look at me like that with those magnetic eyes of hers, I can improve. I could write a letter, I could fill a whole library with letters and still not get tired. If her eyes wouldn't tie my tongue in an invisible knot I wouldn't have to toil like this, but I wouldn't complain about the knot in my tongue, the lump in my throat, the congestion in my chest and other feelings I can't name in my intestines, as long as she keeps an eye, no both her beautiful eyes on me."

Rain. Cold. Tiger. Noodles. Carrots.

The movie I watched yesterday had a mixed message, about organic farming, about who decides the expiry date for a woman's dreams and desires, and the actress's come-back.

I'm stuck on this one beautiful song from a movie I thoroughly enjoyed watching. I'm a sucker for sad songs so whenever I play a heartwarming, happy, falling-in-love song, on repeat mode it does really mean that I love love love everything about the song. Especially the Tabla beats. And MashaAllah the singer's voice, this is his second song I'm listening to and both are songs I love.

It breaks my heart to know that it's raining and I'm always hoping it wouldn't. I love rain. It's my soul's, heart and self's favorite season. But I am not happy and the rain makes me sadder, and sicker, sneezing or losing voice every now and then. Can't wait to be back to my senses, settle by the Window with a hot cup of chai, watching the rain, reading an e-book.

So I've been slicing orange sticks of beauty and good eyesight, carrots in uncomplicated language again. I love cutting veggies to cooking them. I like carrot pieces, thin long and yummy. No, I don't like them raw, cooked or kept in brine. Also I made 'maggi' noodles, which nobody liked but everyone ate and pan is empty now. I'm hurt. I'm not making maggi again.

Oh and the tiger-I'll have to resort to amrutanjan/Vicks/tiger balm if the cold gets bad. I don't like any. But I'd prefer tiger balm not only because tiger is my favorite animal, but its better than the other two. Then there is the axe oil, for tummy aches and head aches.

De-depressed. 2

It's a quarter after eleven. I took care not to look at her home as I got off the car. I feared that I would expect her by the door smiling and waving at me. I hurried inside leaving mom and dad to get the luggage. Mom helped me unpack while I sat on my bed staring at the windows that opened to the side of her bedroom. We would sit by the windows and yell at each other or just do whatever we were doing occasionally looking at one another. I asked mom if she could close them and move the curtains, that the light hurt my eyes. She did as told and closed the door behind her and left.

The smell of vomit, the stingy taste of bile in my throat, I was feeling ill again. I reached for my bag, swallowed a few random pills and waited for the sick feeling to go away. What the medicines did was numb my sick mind, they never helped. I hated my psychiatrist and her lousy assistant who believed I was a nasty uncooperative bitch, that I had no real problem at all. Sometimes she makes me want to cry out loud, but my problem was that I couldn't cry all I'd do was throw up and followed by reliving every goddarned second of the dreaded day. So they shut up and prescribed me more pills soon I stopped questioning the purpose of each pills, I just downed them with two glasses of water and hoped for all my demons to be left dead by the damned medication.

I must've fallen asleep sometime after that. It was only after I woke at 12 in the night I realized I had taken sleeping pills. My head was heavy and pounding, it hurt so bad that I screamed. Which brought mom and dad to my room, they were awake from the ghostly pale look on their face I could tell they were worried. That night I slept in my mom's lap, my feet resting in dad's lap. I slept peacefully, I had cramps when I woke in the morning but I smiled when I saw my parents asleep, in the same position I saw them before falling asleep.

For some unknown reason it reminded me of our sleepovers, we'd stay up all night, talking, playing games, making paper cranes, watching cartoons and doze off on the floor, in the sofa, chair, bed, table just about anywhere. One night we tired ourselves out, making origami stuff and when we woke in the morning we found ourselves amidst of paper cranes and paper lanterns hung in the ceiling, origami flowers all over the floor and a big white poster on the wall that said "we have the world's biggest sleepyheads for daughters, you guys are amazing either way". Our parents had decorated our room with everything that we made in the night. It was beautiful and I remember her saying, looking up the ceiling, we were laying on the floor "you know I've always wanted to hang stars, fluorescent ones in my room and stare at them every night and imagine I was floating amongst them. But this is even better, flying paper cranes and pretty little lanterns" and I told her she was being ridiculous and romantic.

I waited for the nauseous feeling to come. But it didn't. Instead I felt warm and pleasant inside. Almost made me want to go in the kitchen and make coffee for everyone. But mom beat me to it.