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Growing up is not as much fun as it sounds.As you grow, you learn. You realize that half of what you are taught about right and wrong is a blurry mess in the "real world". You discover people with the most awe-inspiring qualities and yet you dislike them. You meet ones that are nothing out of the ordinary and you fall madly in love with them. You defy common sense with every step because hard cold logic doesn't work when you have to make decisions that not just involve your feelings and sentiments but others' too.
You spend a ridiculous amount of time just justifying your actions to yourself. Compliments don't mean much if you aren't well in your own eyes. Criticism is welcomed with open arms because its comforting to receive any sort of reaffirmation; even if its your own self doubt in question.
You learn the harsh lesson of regret. How it feels to let yourself down. You wish you could turn around time, go back on every action, on every word spoken, on every promise made. You wish you could be reborn with a little less innocence and naivete.
You learn how difficult it is to have faith in anything or anybody and hold on to it. You realize that most of the times, your faith is what ends up making you feel foolish and if you are strong enough, you fight the odds and try to cling on to it because you believe your life could be an exception to the laws of nature.
As you grow, you try to shield yourself from reality and look for people who help you forget, just for a little while everyday, that life didn't turn out the way you expected or hoped for it to. Your friends are completely different people tied together by one uniform characteristic; they make you come to terms with how nothing really works out the way you plan it but that you can still find a way to be content.
Don't be in a hurry. Hold on to your innocence and your faith. Hold on to your naivete. Believe in the inherent goodness of people and be shocked when someone disappoints you. Be indignant when things don't turn out the way you expected them too. Cry without abandon.
Don't be in a hurry. There is really no way out once you get here.

The things we forget are the things that truly matter.

The nights spent studying at the last moment, promising ourselves we would start working earlier from the next time. The mornings when we are impressed by our body's love-hate relationship with insomnia or the mornings we zone out and try accomplishing impossible athletic feats in the living room because we can't cram in more information before the exam.

The unplanned conversations about childhood and cartoons watched and how impossibly attractive Jessica looked in Johnny Quest or how the Yogi Yahooeys were most certainly some avatar of pure evil. The conversations you wished stretched on for longer because they made you feel young again. They made you forget, for a few precious minutes, how much you deal with every minute of the day.

The times pride takes a backseat and you ask for company anyway. 

Those people who matter more to you than the act of putting up a front.

The times spent overdosing on newly found culinary obsessions and systematically eliminating them off a cosmic list. 

The days you realize how everything you forgot along the way was everything most important.

I like Februaries.
They are that time of the year for me when I properly start reflecting on the year that has passed. Januaries are just too full of anticipation and accidental mistakes while writing the date. Every year around this time, something triggers me to pause briefly and rethink things. Sometimes it leads to me embarking on newly found interests, like five years ago when I first began writing a blog. And sometimes it makes me realize that I need to jump start on a new way of life or an attitude towards it.
As always, my words flow more easily when I am not speaking them out loud. And so often I wonder what all the fuss is about there. You spend so much time and energy in relationships that finally put you in that place where you can talk about your feelings and your fears without being ashamed of them, but the end result is not even close to what you expected. Why utter words that fall on closed ears? Maybe it is not the worst thing, to keep your thoughts to yourself.
The last month has been very tough, to give a modest estimate. When my parents moved away, I didn't allow the true intensity of the situation to register properly. Maybe it was self defense, maybe it was just convenient, or maybe I was blissfully deluded. But it's never easy to break it to yourself that your best friend for the first 20 years of your life is going to move away halfway across the world and expect to deal with it in 30 days. Neither have I been the best person to adjust to change, major or otherwise. So I sought solace in the irrational belief that I could hold on to one person and expect him to keep my world from spinning around a little too fast. That's my biggest weakness. Irrational belief.
Not to be confused with expectation. An expectation is not nearly as naive or dangerous as a belief. You play with your faith when you believe, you merely play on your luck when you expect. Luck is an instrument to be regularly blamed or lauded. Faith once lost doesn't return.
I find myself addicted so often to objects and people. I am addicted to feeling secure. I live for those days when I feel like nothing can change immediately. That that very moment of happiness is infinite. It is like my own hiding place against everything that scares me, and once in, I forget how to get out. I get so used to the comfort that I refuse to believe that I can and have survived without it too. At times I feel that living with some amount of dissatisfaction or loneliness keeps you grounded. It's like a slow persistent journey of damage control.
Somewhere along the way, over the last three years, I have forgotten that being alone doesn't have to imply loneliness. I have become so wholly and completely dependent on people to validate my happiness and sense of security that when left alone, I am hopelessly lost. Last year, around this time, I finally found myself in a place where I could be strong enough to bank on no one else but myself and the only two people in the world that I can forever trust to be on my side and not abandon; my parents. I need that back.
Because I might be in a bad place right now, but I can fight through it only if I stop deluding myself. And only if I admit to the fact that at the end of the day, we are all alone, and we are all fighting our own battles. In your best of times, you can look up to find a hundred different friends. In your worst, you must brace yourself to fight your own demons. Maybe when you are done, you might find those people again. And maybe you might learn to laugh at the irony.

To a very special friend.

Dear Friend,
I know we didn't start off on the right foot. You being you probably won't even remember how things were in the beginning but we were never the best of friends. Far from it really. They say opposites attract, using the same logic, maybe people who are very similar make each other wary? I don't know.
The strangest part is that I don't remember how it came about to be this way, but you became one of my favorite people in this large overcrowded city which still feels new. Over cups of bad machine-dispensed chai and sad excuses for "breakfast" on the eighth floor, a very special bond was cemented. And soon enough, you became the very first person in the world who sent me morning texts. After so many years of sending others morning texts, I finally had someone do the same for me. You have no idea how much I appreciate it.
From the long long conversations about everything under the sky to our shared paranoia and opinions, I have never enjoyed conversations with a girl so much.
I know this is so long due, but this it to let you know that I love you, McFlurry. You're a star.

A year gone by.

And just like that, it's almost 2012.
2011 has literally just passed me by in a flash. It is late December and this is generally around that time of the year when I look back in retrospect. Unfortunately for me, retrospection brings along with it a lot of regret or worse, that dull distant feeling of being suspended in the air, with no complementary emotion.
Of course, in comparison to the year before, 2011 has been free of any serious mishaps. If anything, I grew up from my mistakes, learned from them and they continue to guide me every day. For that, I am thankful. 2011 has also been a fantastic learning experience in terms of the Delhiite. Living with someone you have met after already having lived on the earth without them for a good 19 years is not easy. Sometimes it is the hardest thing to do to not blow it all away, and don't we all have a marvelous knack of self destruction that way. And then sometimes it is blissfully simple. It is as natural as the sun breaking into the sky at 6:30 am,on the dot; never a minute here or there.
The last few months have been very tough. But they didn't catch me completely by surprise. Sometimes the good is interspersed with the bad, but sometimes you enjoy all the good at a time and then deal with all the bad. It's all okay. We're programed to handle it. We are never given even a little bit more than what we are capable of handling. And so we deal. Because it has to get better.
I am rambling.
The last few months made me grow up more than I thought I ever would in such a short span of time. They made me question my blind faith and perhaps made me smarter in a way, albeit less trusting. Betrayals, even the smallest ones, teach you important lessons. They teach you that innocence is a blessing, but to use that as a window to look at everything and everybody is foolish. The last few months taught me about disappointment and how it will never entirely stop coming. With time, you learn to move on faster or deal with them with a stiff upper lip. The last few months taught me I have perspective and immense courage.
When you are dragged out of your normalcy, you have two choices. You either wait for all the blows to reign in on you and then try to get up. Or you try standing up after the very first blow and deal with the rest as they come. And this time, I choose the latter.
The year was a rush of beautiful, happy things. And then there were the life-altering changes that would define the way I look at myself and my life from hereon. But all in all, I am entering the next year more proud of myself, more fulfilled and far more aware.

To my Grandfather

His palms were like paper; dry, leaf-like, almost translucent. I feared holding them. They felt so brittle under my touch. Like the bones of a tiny bird under its thin coat of feathers. I thought they would snap, just trying to be. Even so, I kept holding them like they were a precious childhood trinket. Afraid of letting them slip through the gaps between my fingers. I held them as gently as I could, humbled by how youthfully cavalier my fingers felt, wrapped around them. Not unlike the emotions you experience while handling an old book; it’s yellowing sweet-smelling paper, threatening to crumble at the slightest application of accidental force. But you want to preserve it. You want to hold on to it forever and so you protect it with everything you have.

He would never let me hold them if he were aware, I thought. Always the proud warrior, the unrelenting fighter; he would pull them back indignantly and look at me with undisguised annoyance; as if to challenge the motive behind my sentiment. His eyebrows raised just enough to question me and make me retreat to a corner with an embarrassed, sheepish smile.

I ran my index finger softly over the veins bulging out through the thin tanned skin on his forearm. The nail is filed short. As are all my other fingernails. We have to take every precaution in order to provide him with the cleanest environment possible. It reminded me of when my baby brother was born fourteen years ago and I had a cold. Every time the doctor came in to check on either the baby or the mother, I held my breath in fear. I was scared that I would sneeze, or cough and let away my carefully guarded secret. I wanted to be there so bad, in that moment, peering down the grills of the hospital crib at the tiny creature below. To reach down and touch its melting-butter skin and that tiny stubbed nose; I had to be careful. Oh so careful.

I reached down to brush my palm against the rough stubble of his cheek. He subconsciously twitched towards my touch and then his face relaxed again. Here was the man who had been a hero to two generations in our family. Here was the man larger than life, full of ideas and thoughts and opinions. Here was the man who never shied off expressing his views and argued till the end. Here was the man who dissolved into thought while we talked to him and whose smile upon being caught betrayed his age. Here was the man who could outrun all of us and push us for more. Here was the man whose approval and appreciation was paramount. Here was the majestic presence, lying frail and unaware. Restive but not resigned.

I love you. You will forever be my hero.

Self-discovery comes at times you least expect it. Possibly when you least want it too. The opportunities you come across every day; the ones you lose, perhaps defining you a little more than the ones that you grasp. The decisions you end up making, the impulsive ones that you make when faced with very little time to ponder. And you end up doing what is true to you, in the process, coming a little closer to finding what you truly are. Maybe what you truly are is what you are truly meant to be. But who reaffirms you of that? And what are you, at the end of the day?
Bad times are purgatory. They are cleansing. Purifying. They let you be exactly who you are, and allow you to let go of the image you work all your life carefully constructing. They make you let go of your stoicism, your seemingly undaunted spirit, your composure, and your forced optimism. They let you stop lying to everybody around you and for a short period of time, you are exactly who you are. You cry, you are more emotional than logical, you are less guarded. You are more raw. You are more human.
Bad times, seemingly relentless in their harshness, often end up doing you more good. They often remind you of the little things you forgot about yourself along the way. Or better still, tiny strengths and slivers of resilience and positivity and an almost stubborn will to overcome. Things you forgot while trying to be calm. The most important parts of you.
Every day is a test of your ability to overcome. There are surprises around every corner, good and bad. There is a comfort in knowing that each person's past is a testimony to their inherent urge to pull through.
No matter how hard, no matter how prolonged. There is great strength in believing in the unproven and having faith. There is great strength in being just you.