Shopping? (cringe!)

The dictionary defines Chores as a hard or unpleasant task. Shopping for me is a Chore (with a capital C). On my one free day –Sunday, mum decides to drag me shopping at the supermarket. It’s pouring and by the time I get there, I look like a wet chicken. With as much dignity I can muster, I enter the fully air conditioned supermarket and listen to the background score of my teeth chattering (very kelvinator). It looks like they’re giving everything away free, judging by the number of people who’re there. There were all sorts of people–fat ones, thin ones, tall ones, short ones…mostly fat ones.

For someone with motor skills two levels above an ape, my mother very adventurously asks me to maneuver the shopping cart. I sigh and grab my cart only to have one of the wheels run over my toes. Mentally yelling at myself for wearing Floaters instead of shoes I sigh and follow mum into the labyrinthine shopping area. “Ouch!” the wheel again as I tried to reverse my cart. As I peer at my toe to evaluate the damage, one supreme shorty decides she wants biscuits from the topmost shelf and causes a cascade of crème biscuits on my previously unbruised head. Now I’m bruised from head to foot (well, my inbetween is miraculously unscathed… not for long though). Looking daggers at her isn’t helping 'coz she’s scuttled off. It would have been better if I had kept my eyes firmly in front of me. Someone with motor skills even worse than mine decides his shopping isn’t interesting enough and playing bumper carts might enhance the experience. Result: a bruised middle. In spite of all the blubber that shields my tummy, I know it’s gonna be a blue bruiser.

Somehow I make my way out of aisle one (in my head, it pops up like a video game: LEVEL 1 COMPLETE: LEVEL 2)

A fact I’ve accepted is, the wheel of my shopping cart has an affinity for my toes. It doesn’t help that other people want to run me over too! And in all this, my mother is blissfully unaware, in her wonderland of aisles filled with things to stack her cart with. The heavier my cart gets, the more unmanageable it becomes.

To make my life a little more bearable, I add some Sprite to my cart only to have mum promptly put it back on the shelf and launch into the “diet” lecture. The chocolate I sneaked in is sneaked back with “the look”.

Feeling great pity for myself, I decide to tame my undomesticated cart. By then, my toes hurt, my legs are aching and my head is throbbing. Just then a kid decides to throw a tantrum and launch himself onto the floor kicking and screaming. Half of me wants to pick him up and pet him, the other half wants to spank the brat. I ignore wailing Wally only to find myself abandoned by mum. The 4 yr old in me wakes up and I panic (why?! I’ve been here a gazillion times) still, I want my mum!!! I scan the aisles and find her looking at some new fangled precooked mishmash. Relieved, I rush to be near her. I go one way, my cart goes the other and the stack of soups comes down crashing. The staff is now glaring at me (they think I’m the creme biscuit crasher). Mum decides the faster she gets me out of here the better. She doesn’t want to be “black listed” for having a delinquent daughter. Luckily, the checkout is reasonably empty as I pile my stuff on the counter, grab my bags and leave.

Living to regret the pain

This is what Kahlil Gibran had to say about pain

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell
that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its
heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder
at the daily miracles of your life, your pain
would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your
heart, even as you have always accepted
the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity
through the winters of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the
physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink
his remedy in silence and tranquility:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided
by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips,
has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter
has moistened with His own sacred tears.”

Unlike many, I don’t find it liberating, I don’t find it a “gift” from the “potter”. After a storm of tears I feel drowned or drenched not emancipated. The constant pain eats into my soul searing myself from the truly happy person I was before. This pain manifests itself in various forms… one more devastating than he other; till I’m left with pieces I’ve managed to salvage but still don’t make a whole. I can’t run or hide ‘coz it’s on the inside… throbbing, unremitting, unwavering till I’m screaming in my own head for it to leave. Physical pain is nothing compared to it…the bruises, cuts or bleeding doesn’t compare and doesn’t make one forget. Prayer doesn’t assuage it, meditation doesn’t calm it and talking about it is a waste of time. I grit my teeth ad hold it all it, put my mask firmly in place. Its source varies faster than a blink till I’m hurting with pain from everywhere that I can’t tell what’s causing me to ache. I hold myself tightly so I don’t disintegrate because that’s what it’s feeling like right now. The death-grip on my sanity is as unwavering as the pain… if I let go, it might let go… I’m not taking chances.

Will you be there for me?

Lately, so many people have been asking me this. As if, in their storm tossed lives, they look for one constant, one rock… weather-beaten but there. They are unsure of where they go and when they will come. But if they do come back, they need the assurance that someone will be there for them, someone they can come back to. They want me to be that person- who will listen to them, be a balm on their travel weary bodies, soothe their uprooted hearts and minds. In the dynamic, ever-changing they ask, “will you be there for me?”
I say, “Yes, always.” Not forever, because forever has ceased to mean anything…. So, always, till the end of time. But when I ask them the same question, they look apologetic as if making an excuse for their fickle minds, hearts and loyalties.
So I sigh, and continue being there for them, without anyone “being there” for me.

the self

This is it. The fragmenting of the self (saṃ). The cohesive forces of the atoms comprising of me undone by my own bidding. When categorical words like forever and never have faded into the background of an unworthy past (I love you forever, friends forever, I’ll never leave you) …. It’s all Maya – illusion… delusion… disillusion? Like a heavy fist of iron it struck deep, it struck true… forcing the essence of my being apart… by my own folly… My nascent atoms roam the universe each carrying my former trait of being a wanderlust in search of answers. And yet each seeks to conform with different beings… separate… individual. A goal unachievable for the fact that they are a part of my being, linked through intangible cosmic threads interwoven to form the fabric of my conscious… the pain… the agonizing pain I seek to numb is only accentuated when I try to cut each thread loose… as if by subduing my conscious and sinking into the subconscious (unconscious maybe), I can somehow forget, alleviate my pain… but that is not to be…. Not in this life, nor in the next. Like Cerberus, it guards the door of my soul and keeps me from peace. The pain is a testimony to my humanness, my vulnerability, my mortality.
Eons ago I lived protected and shielded, my naïveté shielding me from the wallops of this hard-hitting world. The subtle cruelty the world seeped into my innocence forever poisoned a pure, unsullied fountain that seeks to be purged daily.
Sleeps offers no respite as dreams shape themselves into my darkest fears. I cry out and jolt awake only to be confronted by them in reality. I sink into a cycle of sleeplessness and wakefulness.
“You are your own master” they say. True for those who blindfold themselves against the vagaries of fate and ignore the twisted plots of destiny. They who choose to live life unquestioningly and uncomplainingly –complacent and happy with whatever is doled out. Do they even realize there’s a higher calling?
Alas, I have been cursed with a mind that asks “Why?” more times than I draw breath. Unanswered questions crowd around, pushing for space to be heard. Would I choose blissful benightedness over the predicament my questioning mind has set down on me? Negative. I refuse to be beguiled by ignorance’s pretty face that urges me to accept it all and move on. ‘So be it’ is not a part of my existence. No matter how painful it may be, I cannot go through life not knowing, not asking. The tribulation and distress are all a part of this journey. I wait in joyful hope, that someday, all mysteries will be made clear, all my questions-answered and peace will line my eyes. Till then I have to pick up the pieces of my fragmented being and forge ahead on my weary way.