The journey from my last post to this

Last night on a whim I decided to write for my blog for this whole month. I am not sure if and how far I’ll go but I am gonna try for sure. It was mostly coming from a space of restlessness, of having accumulated so much inside me last two and a half years and not being able to put it in words. 

I came to the blog to just check when I had written last, and it was June 10, 2018. I nearly choked reading the date because it was a post I had written two days before mom went into coma. Two days before our lives changed forever. I nearly choked thinking of those two days and how casually I would have called momma two times a day, how I wish it never had happened, and that she had never left. But she is gone, and I have a lump in my throat as I type this, her beautiful framed photo on the bookshelf, watching over me with her loving eyes. 

Now it makes sense to me about why I didn’t get around writing from June 2018 to right now - I really just wasn’t ready. Writing may have been cathartic, as many recommended it to me, but I wasn’t in great mental health to form coherent sentences. I may have drowned myself in a lot of other things (mostly unproductive, not-so-healthy things) to process my grief but I simply couldn’t write. Probably the only long-form content I read during this time was on grief. My bookshelf is overflowing with all the unread books. I remember binge-watching content nights on nights, I remember installing dating apps and randomly chatting up with men I wouldn’t chat with normally, and most importantly I remember abusing my body by eating whatever junk I could lay my hands on. This is quite embarrassing to even write considering how in my last post, I wrote 800 words on my fitness journey. 

But honestly, I didn’t have a mechanism to deal with my grief and food seemed to be a familiar territory that could be my comfort zone. It took me a good one year after mom to understand that she would really not like what I was doing to myself. 

Nothing can prepare you for this, there’s no manual on how to deal with grief. I was functioning on extremely heightened sensitivity. I would be laughing one minute and would drop into a pool of tears the next minute. Whatever I did, wherever I went, there would come a point when I would mentally withdraw and go inward, where there was this huge void staring at me. Let me tell you this still happens, and I am sure it’s gonna stay. Every day there is a point when I stop in the middle of something, either work or cooking or listening to music or talking to my sister or just any unrelated thing, and realize that mom is no more with us. 

Grief is when you have had a perfect day at work and then you lay your head on the pillow at night, only to howl into a silent night and beg her to come back. Grief is when you have put on red lipstick and then another minute you burst into tears because red lipstick was her favorite. Grief is when you are doing Diwali pooja and in the middle of aarti you end up crying because she made Diwali the best festival for us. 

I continue to learn, fail, make wrong choices, have my overthinking overpower my life, cry at the drop of a hat, think I am weak but deep in my heart I now know that I am strong, I am healing and I am trying to bring some purpose to my existence, and that mom would be proud of me. 

The journey from June 10, 2018, to December 1, 2020, has been the longest, most painful journey I have undertaken, something I wish I could undo, but here we are. 

It must have been something...

Must have been some day,

Some spring evening possibly.

With the falling leaves outside,

The heart fluttered albeit consciously.

Your almond brown eyes spoke

Yet you never said anything.

Your warm and familiar smile,

Was both unsettling and comforting.

Every coffee we never shared,

And many jokes we cracked.

Every dance we never attempted.

And walking steps we tracked.

We mayn’t have a chance.

We may have moved apart.

There’s something you must know.

You quite had my heart.

Being me is being awesome!

She loved her coffee truly, madly, deeply.

She was often crazy and mostly confused.

She was stronger than she thought of herself.

And being her was about being awesome.

This post has been written for "Being ME-the HERstory montage" hosted by Indiblogeshwaris to mark International Women's Day. To know more and participate click here.

My God. My Faith.

Early this year, the family planned the trip to Vaishno Devi. Since I was booking the tickets, I had kept my monthly cycle in mind. But when does life go the way you want it to? Life shows its colors and suddenly the otherwise small things become important and jostle for footage in the larger picture!

Turned out, the periods got delayed and the dates to the trip got closer. I hit the panic button. I was worried, confused and hysterical. I asked friends about what I could do. And most of them were surprised about why I needed to do anything in the first place.With much mixed feelings, went to see a doctor to ask her for some medicines that could further delay the periods. She did give me some medicines and I bought those in a conked off state of mind. And then, I thought about it. I remember sitting down, looking at those medicines and thinking hard. Why do I need to take those? What if it has some side-effects? And most importantly, why would God want me to go through all this?

For the uninitiated, a woman is not supposed to enter the temples or religious places when she is in periods. Atleast, this is the belief I was brought up with. And honestly, I followed it to T, without actually questioning. Until that day. I did not want to offend anyone. But I wasn't ok with popping a pill. It was a natural occurrence and when God has given something, She must accept me with everything. I did not bring it on me. I had booked the tickets way in advance factoring all I could have at that time. To my surprise, my mom was against the pills too. That was all the support I needed. I chucked the pills and got ok with the whole idea. The idea of what will be, will be.

Same way, like many of us, there were some days of the week when I abstained from eating non-vegetarian food. Like Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. I followed it too without questioning. I knew a Friday was also for Goddess Durga, a Saturday too was sacred to some, then why limit my love and devotion to just three days? And why not all days same? Meat eating or non-meating. To wade away from this one needed a lot of explanation to my mother, who is a staunch vegetarian and doesn't get my love for meat! Some months back, I started following some diet restrictions, and eating a normal omelette in office canteen seemed a wise choice than ordering a burger on any given day of the week. And slowly, I let go of this one too.  

This was one big breakthrough in my relationship with God and my faith in Her. I will call myself religious. A God-loving person and not a God-fearing person. I have always had the most comfortable relationship with religion. I have not read scriptures, but I visit the temple in the house every morning. I don't know the mantras but I love the sound of aartis sifting in my ears around festivals and auspicious occasions. I am very very faithful to my religion and admit to not understanding other religions, but I am just comfortable with the diversity that our country offers. 

Religion to me is being comfortable in your faith, knowing that there is someone watching over you, you can go and ask Her for help in difficult times, thank Her when there is a happy news, know that in the end you are answerable to no one but Her, being friends with Her, let Her into your deepest secrets and you won't be disappointed and just taking Her as one of those support pillars that help you lead a happy life. And definitely not let it blind you, make you believe that only your faith is the best, that if you don't do a X thing, the Gods will be infuriated with you. No. I don't know any other faith, and I haven't read my vedas too, but I am very sure no religion teaches bad, no religion asks its followers to treat others badly and no religion professes violence. Every religion is about tolerance and love. 

I have learnt that just by making people around you happy, not hurting anyone knowingly, doing the right thing and yes, just having a heart is what my religion has taught me. Trust me, eating meat or skipping a prayer fade in comparison to the hurt we cause to the people we love. And no religion prescribes that.