Maybe now is not the time for relationships anyway. Maybe I need to first work on myself and that all of this is for the best.

There are times when I am able to look beyond the pain and injustice, and those days feel better. I find myself at the precipice, knowing that its all too easy for me to tip into depression at this point. I literally feel all my muscles wanting to simply stop working, my mental and physical energy drained. I only want to laugh. I watch shows that make me laugh, although I can see them being extremely sexist and in contrary to my beliefs. But I want to laugh, and so I watch, hoping that only the neurotransmitters produced by the laugh endures as opposed to the lingering subconscious effects of this sexist bullshit.

There are larger problems in the world right now. That widens your perspective about these things. But sometimes you still lose heart. 

Maybe

When someone starts talking to me about their marriage or boyfriend, or even when I see as much as a mention of a relationship whether on social medial or even movies, it has begun to deeply disturb me. It leaves me wondering why, if relationships are so commonplace, have I not been able to be in one. Invariably leading me to wonder whether I am unworthy of love and respect.

This is a very dangerous line of thought for me. Maybe a few years down the line it will be easier for me to look back at this and affectionately dismiss my worries as being silly, but right now it appears to be have the potential to crush my spirit. Which it does every night and sometimes suddenly out of nowhere. I try to control these breakdowns, often I'm successful and many other times I am not.

When my previous relationship ended, I remember these same things had happened. I now keep reminding myself that this pain will last for a few days and then things will get better. This deep  sense of injustice may not fade entirely, but will get easier to deal with. You will emerge an enriched person. Hurt and enriched. So that's about me. But I see so many such cases of women around me in relationships that hurt so deeply. And in many of these the man has just walked away scott-free, no remorse or even acknowledgement of the trouble he has put her through and I wonder if there will at all be  any justice. If they will at all be acknowledged as abuse, taken seriously and worked towards eliminating it. At this point all I want is my mental peace, and by the time I get that I don't want anything to deal with relating to this person. And then that gets closed there. He continues to be a great person to the world. I don't think that even in his own mind he acknowledges the pain that he has caused me. For closure begins with acknowledgement. Many women go through this, and it seemed to have been normalized as part of a relationship. I don't know anymore what love means or what a relationship is.

I have to remember and never forget how painful this is. And perhaps stay away from relationships. Its not possible for me to saunter from one relationship into another, every relationship has taken a part of me away. Its not so much that I think every relationship should last to eternity. Its just that one can behave decently and end it on as amicable a note possible. But what do you do when a person simply abandons and absconds? What do you do when you have been understanding about previous episodes of abandonment with the belief that every person comes with their own baggage and that it takes time to understand how to navigate through the relationship with each of your baggage and that its only a matter of time before things such as these are resolved? Only to realize that you have been subjected to the same treatment by this person who now appears to have taken you for granted and prioritizing everything else over you. What do you do when the understanding that you are disposable slowly washes over you? That you can literally feel some regions of your brain becoming heavy from all this pain and stress. I guess you do what you can do at the moment. You switch off your phone to trick your mind into believing that perhaps he will try calling you and then realize how hurt you are because you have never before switched off your phone. You do this not so much to cause pain to someone else as much to protect your own brain by cushioning it with delusions, knowing that he has never before tried to reach out on his own in the event of such fights. Its marvelous how your mind is privy to both these facts and still cooperates in the delusion.

Maybe there never will be a closure to all this pain. Maybe some day I'll write a perspicacious story that resonates with millions of women reeling under the dichotomy of wanting love and rejecting conditioned patriarchy. Maybe. 

Just in case you are reading this SHRINKSUA

I LOUVEE YOU!!

There is a comfort in writing here, almost paradoxical wherein it is private and yet with the allusion of being public.

I Have Missed Writing

I have missed Writing.

I think it can be safely said that I have developed a fear of writing. It is after quite some time that I have been able to bring myself to commit words to paper, or the blogspace.

I have a fear of writing. Maybe it stems from the lack of lucidity in thoughts that I have been experiencing lately. Also from my inability to focus on a task completion without getting distracted.

Just yesterday I distinctly felt my mind leaning towards a sexist sitcom series that I don't even like very much over the opportunity to watch something that I have never watched before. I think its likely that today too I may go home to binge-watch this series to its end. I know there's no point in that. Its not even the great. Its just the comfort of the familiarity of the characters that makes me go back to it.

Speaking of there being no point, that pretty much sums up my feelings towards anything of late. I'd rather sit curled up in my bed and read, or watch. I remember earlier too, many years ago I had felt this way. And only recently realized that I perhaps was depressed during that time. I often find myself wondering these days if perhaps this too is the same. And I will have an offset remembering this too.

The only good thing about my life right now, is that I am financially independent. But my job doesn't make me happy. This financial independence is paramount for me because everything revolves around that. And that in turn perhaps revolves around the centre of my sadness. I am aware that I have to make lemonades from lemons. I have always loved lemonades. Made a lot of it even when I didn't know that they were called so. I am just unable to do it these days. I have had trouble with keeping at things that make me better. And somewhere I am dangerously self-antagonistic. A lot of this stems from the sense of isolation and ridicule that I have distinct memories of having experienced as a child. Now my equation with my parents have bettered considerably. Bettered even beyond what I perhaps thought was possible. Then why haven't these things gotten better? Is is because I'm still reliving that sense of neglect and being unloved even now through my relationship? 

A person’s goodness always reflects on his face. Your face, your eyes are windows to your souls. The goodness, the strength of your character shines through it. Through the way you smile, the way you hold your head, your gaze. Maybe this is what our future scientists would study. Just as how we sometimes wonder Aristotle to have even considered The Theory of Spontaneous Generation possible, kids in the future may wonder as to how our generation failed to realize the obvious connection between people’s characters and their faces. Its as if we ignored something that’s staring right at us.

Ironies and Paradoxes of Indian Development

Economic development is what everyone swears by today. And we wish to quantify this economic development in terms of a rapidly increasing GDP and present that to the world as the proof of India’s economic development. In the process, we often overlook some fundamental issues – Who is this growth intended for? Do those intended bear the fruits of this economic progress in reality? And most importantly, what are the real costs of this economic development?

Ours is a democratic nation. But what is more conspicuous than democracy is infact a democracy of injustice and inequality where injustice and inequality are inflicted by the people, on the people and for the people. This chasm of disparity has in fact deepened more during the period of India’s economic development.

Take for instance what is now ostensibly considered as an indicator of economic growth and development – Growth of Cities and Urbanization, ergo, the Smart Cities program of our country. So caught up are we in catering to the ever-increasing urban population that we fail to notice how the urban resource-consumption has, besides emptying its own share of resource allocation, also eaten into what is rightfully the rural share of resources. Reports indicate as to how urban development is taking place at the cost of rural progress. For example, the very primary resource, Water, and in that fresh water is being diverted from agricultural/irrigation purposes to meet the drinking water needs of urban areas. And instead, the waste water generated by these urban areas, partially or completely treated waste water, is then sent back to the rural areas for the purpose of farming. Interestingly, the agricultural produce so obtained is then rejected from the market on the grounds of contamination. So essentially what is happening is that the rural areas are firstly given low quality input to be used as means of their livelihood and then penalized for producing low quality output using this same input. There is a gross injustice that is being inflicted on the rural communities for the sake of providing better quality amenities to the urban class.  There is a gradual class divide that this brings into the picture- probably a new age caste system in contemporary India. So, even as urbanization is claiming the rightful share of rural space, which is the backbone of Indian economy and soul, focus is still on urbanization rather than rapid rural development. Talks are more of Smart Cities than Smart-Self-Sustained-Villages.

It is estimated that by 2050, the percentage of Indian population living in the cities is expected to rise from the present 30-40% to about 70%. But instead of working on equipping the cities to withstand this explosive rate of urbanization, it would be prudent to examine the causes of migration that has been a major contributor to the increase in urban population. The focus should then shift on these issues, which primarily centre around better livelihoods and opportunities, and provide the same in rural setting thus minimizing migration and subsequently expansion in urbanization, and also simultaneously raising the standard of life. But instead we are consumed by this notion of equating development with urbanization. Where did this idea come from? Where did even this notion of GDP as a measure of development come from? From the West, of course. After Indian independence, India was launched on a growth trajectory modeled on the West’s economic growth model, even as the West itself was beginning to get over its obsession with consumerism and had started to look for more sustainable means of development. So, even as the West has realized the environmental perils of industrial production and has outsourced nearly all of its dirty jobs to third-world countries desperate for economic growth (take China and Malaysia as examples), India is offering up herself at the altar urging companies to come Make In India and therefore pollute in India. It’s as if we are offset from this whole cycle of economic growth and development by more than half a century or so, that even as we could learn our lessons from the West and leap directly into sustainable means of livelihood and economy, we are instead opting to go through the whole process of industrial expansion and environmental degradation. Interestingly, the West itself if now looking at community-based livelihood and decentralized governance, a concept advocated by Mahatma Gandhi and his followers more than 70 years ago. What is ironic is that the very people who prefer the West’s model of economic growth over that of sustainable livelihoods and community-based living long-practised in India, are the ones who are vehemently opposed to the Western Influence in Indian Culture.