Saudade - the malady of missingness

Missing you is a malady. An aberration of the heart that helps with nothing and interferes with everything. We talk all day. And you don't leave me alone in my dreams either. I don't understand how I could still miss you.
But I missed you that night when I lay in bed with you. My head on your shoulder, your fingers in my hair. The silence filling the room, every breath in sync. That night I missed your voice.

I like waking up next to you on a holiday. Not having to rush anywhere, staying in bed, doing nothing. But I missed you that morning when I woke up. We talked for hours. Cracked silly jokes, laughed till our jaws heart. We were so loud that morning. That morning I missed hearing you breathe.

Remember the nights of relentless love making? Our burning hot bodies so close, it was hard to tell one from another. Those nights I missed the spaces between us.

I like how you would kiss me goodbye every time you had to travel for work. How my eyes would well up despite knowing you will be back the next day. How you would call me at every opportunity with an excuse just to hear my voice. Those nights I missed you. I missed your touch.

I hate going to the movies with you. I hate that we sit so close to each other for three hours and can't speak a word. I hate that there's so much that happens on screen I want to share an opinion about right then but I can't. I hate that you can't show me another way of looking at it while we are right there. All those evenings, I miss our conversations. 

Daughter to Father

Papa. Today, I paused long and hard after writing that four letter word. I reflected. Rewind to Father's Day 2011, I woke up that morning my heart filled with gratitude like never before. To be honest, and to just say it bluntly, no sugar coating, I was just happy that day that you were alive. Unpleasant memories are the last thing one wants to remember. Naturally, the more you try to push these thoughts aside, the more stubborn these beasts get at resurfacing.
Nov 26th, 2010 was unambiguously the worst day of my life. Just like every year, I had taken the 17 hour flight to India, one day before your birthday. Around midnight, I reached home, rang the bell and waited with my full blown smile to greet you all. Mummy opened the door. Her face cold & pale as a white stone, no expression. Within seconds, I felt my jaw muscles stiffen. The only word I could manage to mouth - "What?" and she burst into tears in my arms. Tania, mom and I lay on the bed that night in distraught silence; counting hours, minutes, seconds. Every second felt like an hour, every hour like a year. We spoke not a word to each other that night. We had none.
Then dawned the morning of 26th, your birthday. First one standing in line as the clock struck visiting hours, I pulled myself strong and entered the ICU. Papa, I will never forget that moment when I saw you that day. Your body lying listless on the hospital bed, face unshaven for days, arms swollen, uncountable tubes & pipes running through the nose, mouth, throat, stomach, veins. Your chest heaving in synch with the scary looking loud ventilator. I know it's the last thing one wants, that no parent wants to live long enough to see his children die. But in that moment, that dying moment I wished and prayed and a thousand other emotions in a second to swap places with you. I stood there and muttered under my breath - "I love you Papa. Happy Birthday" as tears wet my cheeks.
The good news is we survived. Recovery was long and difficult and painful but we made it. I say 'we' because I think it was a cumulative flow of positivity and hope from all the people whose lives you have touched and who love you that brought you back. Even the doctors agreed this was nothing short of a miracle. In a few months from now, you will hit the 5 year cancer free milestone. I look at you everyday and see how hard you fought, how strong you were in the face of adversity, how many times you lost, how many times you were knocked down but didn't surrender. There is more to learn from you than I can possibly try to in a lifetime. And there is more I feel for you than any number of words from the dictionary can ever tell. I admire you and your tenacity and I want some day I can be half of what you are. Almost every prudent thing I have done thus far in life (though there are very few), I owe them to you and you alone. On this father's day, I just want to give you a public shout out - "My Daddy Strongest". Happy Father's Day Papa. Live long & strong!

How I stopped cribbing and finally started living.

Like most of you all know, I wake up every morning wanting to travel. But within a few minutes the realization dawns upon me that my bank account is not at all in agreement with my wanderlust. This results in going around in circles over the same ground, daily frustration and a cloud of hopelessness because I am not quite the savings kind and even the once or twice when I have tried, it just ends up some place else. More pragmatic if you would like to call it that but of little real use to me in the present day and also often times ends up being put to philanthropic causes, yet again never really making me directly happy or closer to my life goals or wants. This is a vicious circle I haven’t been able to break for years. But last morning, I had an idea, almost a brainwave and I think I can finally change this. Also, I have barely begun but I want to share this with you in case you want to give it a try too. It would be fun to have some company on this mission.

Now, like most of us our generation, I am an impulsive buyer. I buy a lot of things to put it bluntly just because I “feel like”. I also tend to get lazy and most times don’t pack lunch from home and end up spending $7.5 at the office café on food I honestly don’t even really want to eat. These are just two examples. There are numerous such thoughtless expenditures every day, multiple times a day. Once in a while, I do act somewhat prudently (by my and strictly my standards, of course) and don’t order that overpriced $12 Long Island Iced Tea that is a shame on the pious institution of mixology anyway. But even when I do that, I don’t see my savings account grow richer by $12. I just never realize I saved a few even on the rare occasions that I do.

So, starting yesterday I have set myself an account called 'Travel Fund' at a zero balance. This could be a savings account linked to your primary bank account, a PayPal account anything really that lets you move small sums of money into it without charging you a fee or making it seem like a Herculean task. And the idea is simple. Every time you cook and bring lunch from home, you transfer the money you would have spent on lunch to that account. Similarly, when you go out for dinner with friends and you order tap water with lemon instead of a fancy ass cocktail, you transfer the $10 or $12. If you wax your hands and legs at home instead of heading to the parlor this weekend, give yourself the $30. And if you pass on that awesome looking brown and gold Michael Kors at the mall tomorrow, transfer that $400 to your Travel Fund account and give yourself a pat on the back. Then when it hits a $600-700 or whatever can buy you a cheap ticket to some place you have been wanting to go, Go! Then come back penny broke but rich with experiences and start at zero again. And remember this life mantra – “Buy experiences, not things” because when you are older that Gucci or Armani won’t make you smile but the hotel staff that clapped like you were President Obama when you were leaving your hotel at Nashville and hurriedly delivering your thank you-cum-goodbye speech clubbed into one, sure as hell will.

Bon voyage!

I need you to talk to me… ALL THE TIME

Silence worries me. In fact, to be completely honest I hate it. Even a minute of silence is unbearable to me. Since I was young, I was cursed with two things –

1. Being unimaginably chatty any hour of the day and never tiring myself out of it

2. Thinking way too much

At first glance, the two may seem totally unrelated but a certain combination of the two can wreak havoc on the likes of me. Yes, you guessed it right. Negative of #1 and a surplus of #2.

When my very chatty self is forced into silence, my mind somersaults into thinking too many things. None of them good.

One such period was when my partner decided to go completely silent on me for nine hours straight one day. I analyzed and over analyzed the dynamics of our relationship. Played the previous day’s conversation over & over in my head. Tried to read between the lines, make more sense of gestures, of words that may have remained unspoken. Cooked up half-a-dozen absurd scenarios in my head. Then one by one reasoned as to why they could not be true.

Living under the curse of technology and a gazillion different ways of corresponding with people, I looked at the last seen whatsapp timestamp a five hundred and thirty seven times. Stalked his Facebook every few minutes for any activity, checked my phone a few times to make sure the network strength was full that I may not be missing any calls. Then resolved to stop thinking about it, maybe he is just busy, maybe he just has nothing to say right now. Or Maybe he doesn’t remember me? Maybe there is nothing left to talk between us? Maybe this relationship is already over or just hanging by a thread? Maybe there is someone else? The human mind is so full of SHIT – ‘Surprisingly Hilarious Imaginative Treatise’, some of them with enough details for a three hundred page fantasy novel. I found myself falling deeper and deeper into an abyss of self-deprecating thoughts only to be suddenly startled by a loud ring. (Of course, I had kept my phone’s ringer on the loudest volume possible). I picked up the phone to be greeted by the sweetest albeit sleepy – “Good morning love”. I froze.

Nine hours back the same voice had wished me a sleepy good night and said the most sincere “I love you”, I had ever heard. I hung up. I knew this had to end. There was enough love but our worlds could never meet. This was my story every night when the rest of the world slept but I, Natasha, a chronic insomniac stayed up all night.

P.S. – This is an alternative style short piece of fiction written to bring into perspective how serious the issue of insomnia is. Insomnia is often not taken seriously by the victim or the people around them. But in most scenarios, chronic insomnia is an early indication of the onset of other major disorders including depression and schizophrenia and can ruin perfectly healthy relationships, marriages, families, careers. Please get help or assist your loved ones in getting help before it’s too late.