You're alone

You’re going to be alone forever. There is nobody in the world – hear me out- nobody who will be able to understand you completely,nobody who will see eye to eye with you on all matters.

We all have that one favourite book,song,movie,painting. Something that strikes a chord within us. Since I’m a book person,I’ll relate it to books. Think of your favourite book. You know those special lines, the one which make your heart feel complete,the ones you relate to so well that you want to show someone. You get that nagging in your head. Somebody NEEDS to know how you feel and how well its been put across here!

Nobody will understand. Even if you do manage to get someone to read it, all you’re going to get in return is a blank look or a quizzical look asking “so?” or at best a hollow “wow that’s nice”

You’ll want to scream at them, cry out “why hasn’t this impacted you profoundly? Why such an underreaction? This what I’ve just shown you holds one of the keys to my existence. It deserves more from you.”

But you can’t make them feel something they just….don’t.

You’re alone.

Nobody is going to know all about you- every little lane of life you’ve walked through,every thought or feeling you have about people, why certain things make you react a certain way, why you find some people so hard to trust. Nobody is going to know the inside workings of your mind-why you obsess over a drink just because it reminds you of a certain boy, what every reference or personal joke means actually, why you want to appear a certain way in front of some people, what demons have pursued you all your life, why are you pushing everyone away, why do you suddenly need to get away from everything?

You’re alone

There will never be one person who’ll walk in with the solution. Even if it feels like there is, you’ll discover soon enough that you’ve been kidding yourself. Nobody will have a mind that mirrors yours. Nobody will come in magically as the “soulmate” we all aspire to find. Someone perfectly like that does not exist. You have GOT to stop believing in the fairytale that you’re going to find somebody with the answers to every question you have,the same excited smile and spark in eyes you have when something touches you, the urge to navigate the inner reaches of your mind and stay despite everything they find. To quote Mean Girls “Stop trying to make it happen. Its not going to happen”

You’re alone.

The faster you accept it and make peace with it, the easier it will be to cope. It will stop you from dying a little every time you’re misunderstood. Trust me, you’ll have saved yourself a lot of disappointment.

Peace

By Nirmitee Mehta

What it takes

She revisited that place tonight. Its been months since she was last there, but it feels like she's never left at all because she instantly feels safe and at home there. And then again it could have been years because she's changed so much and so has her life, its hard to remember the person she used to be in minute detail. The hopes, dreams and wishes dissipated with time. It was here that she had said farewell to the fancies of the young her before she stepped onto the threshold of adulthood. Back then she'd been craving something real in life. Living it in her mind in theory was something she'd had enough of. Her heart craved something that would turn the beautiful candy floss that her thoughts were made up of into something more than an illusion-give a more believable base to them.
Today she wishes she'd never looked beyond what she had then. Dissatisfied though she was, she'd been happy in her soul. She still believed in believing, in love, in happy endings, in the fluttering of hearts, of your heart feeling bigger than yourself, in having true feelings towards someone. It was these beliefs that had been her driving force-the sparkle in her eyes, beauty in her life, blush in her cheeks, dance of her limbs.
Right now, right here, that illusion and that she is shattering-it has been for quite some time now, like a glass wall hit by a car in a hurry. So it was with her, she'd been in too much of a hurry for the experiences that she settled for less and in turn got heavily disillusioned.
Every single time that she came here in the almost forgotten age, she'd write letters addressed to nobody in particular, each weaving a tale of her world, incorporating every whim, fantasy, dream, hope, belief. Its to find them that she's returned today, clinging to the last strand of hope which tells her that on reading those letters, some semblance of the lost her will be rediscovered. She scrambles over to the spot next to the willow tree where she'd kept them imprisoned, hidden from the world. Her hands start digging the soil, getting dirt underneath her carefully tended nails, which she does not pay heed to. Its the least of her worries now. One hand pushes back the long hair streaming into her face as the other, clenched in a fist against her heart tries to control its thud as she desperately wishes for the wooden casket enclosing them to remain. She feels a flash of joy as her hand hits wood and the familiar dark brown box with the tiny butterfly carvings appears before her. Her anticipation grows as she opens it and sees the small pile of colored folded sheets of paper. But as she picks one up, this changes into a feeling of dread. Her throat suddenly goes dry and her eyes well up with tears which without notice give way, blurring the words on paper. She can't bear it-her former happiness and optimism might make her feel more alone and lost than ever. What will she do if the largest piece of herself outside her body fails to have the desired impact and instead appears shallow to her? How much will that break her? Will there be anything at all be left after that? No. She can't make herself take this great a risk.
She now stands up, still holding the letters, dusts soil off her knees and skirt and walks into the water until she is calf deep in seawater and then holds them out in her hands till the wind blows them away, depositing them onto the surface of water where they float. Now her dreams are free to take whichever form they want. Now they are unencumbered. All of herself will come back to her when it wants to-when she is ready for it. Though this is not what she'd come here for today, she is more relieved and at peace than she's been for a long time.

By Nirmitee Mehta

Between the lines

She was pure, unsullied, naïve.

He was worldly wise, the “bad boy”, the player.

She was persecuted- the one everyone picked on.

He was influential, he controlled the waters there.

She found him obnoxious.

Her thoughts never crossed his mind.

Mutual friends got their paths to cross once.

She found him good natured and friendly.

He found her funny.

The ice had broken.

He started talking to her electronically.

She responded.

He was amused.

She was intrigued.

They spoke all day once.

She spilled her guts out to him and let him in, inside her life and mind.

He seemed sympathetic and told her he’d take care of it.

She began looking forward to their virtual conversations.

One time they left the digital haven to meet up in the real world. A flurry of rumours encircled them and their equation was misconstrued.

She shrugged it off as idle talk and continued texting with the same fervor.

He stopped replying as much.

She expected response.

He’d somehow stopped giving it.

She stalked his facebook profile as girls do.

She was aware of his presence always when he was nearby.

He did not show any outward sign of change or discontent.

He did not acknowledge her- no looks, no words.

She is afraid of talking to him in public.

She imagines situations where they would be thrown together and imagines how their conversation would go.

He couldn’t really care less.

She always falls for boys of this breed.

He will never know what it is like to love a girl like her.

She knows she should just forget about it all.

He hardly thinks of her.

She does not want to fall for him.

He never will.

By Nirmitee Mehta

Falling for words

             My love and discovery of new words comes from my love of books. Ever since I was a little girl, I've always been falling in love with certain words-being unexplainably drawn to them and trying to bring them up in every conversation as long as I was obsessed with them. Often these favourite words have started meaning more to me than their intrinsic meaning and I use them with a smile on my face as the memories, emotions and little incidents related to them come rushing back to me.

             One of the first words that I got obsessed with was 'tacky'. My friend, let's call her Antimony, and I used it every minute of the day. Due to overuse its meaning for us changed from being cheap or tawdry to describing anything that displeased us in the least. Eventually we outgrew it and moved on to another word crush.

About a year ago, if you remember facebook witnessed a massive wave of colour based statuses by women according to the lingerie they had on that particular day in a (misguided) attempt to raise awareness for breast cancer. Seeing the array of over descriptive colours put up, a cynical friend put up her own colours ranging from custard blue to sunshine purple. It was the last of these that got my heart beating faster, my eyelashes flutter and me smile without reason as I had fallen in love with this pretty phrase that made me happy. There was something just so optimistic, magical and sparkly about it, something about its soul that seemed to quintessentially mirror mine and so it captured my heart. 

             My first encounter with the word disillusion was in the 9th grade while studying the Indian independence movement where the national leaders were said to have been disillusioned by the promises the British made. I was mildly fascinated by it but was not yet aware as to how much the word would later affect me. Fast forwarding to 2 years later where I had a crush on a guy, let's call him Alpha. Ironically around the same time we were doing a song called "Désenchantée'' (the French word for disillusion) in class. I was head over heels for him until one day at a party I saw him smoke. Now, to each his own but I abhor the habit and don't take it well if a person close to me indulges in it.

After that, the nothingness of complete disillusion set in. It broke my heart, not dramatically with a million tears but sadly and with the new understanding that a lot of times, people let you down not intentionally but just by showing you a facet of their personality you didn't know of and don't like.

             Sometimes it does happen. Words, even beautiful ones cause pain. Meanwhile, I continue reading, constantly finding new words and falling in love with them.

By Nirmitee Mehta