Sunday 10 February 2013

On Growing Up and Born Confused


My conversations with KrA, when involving the arcane questions I am prone to ask so often these days, end up being monologues. And somehow, more often than not, in trying to make sure my question makes sense to him, I paraphrase and rephrase and inadvertently stumble upon an answer too. Maybe not an entire answer, but usually at least a part of it.

Today I said to him this: “When I was very young, I told myself I’d grow up into being a very sophisticated lady. Now I am xxx (on the other side of thirty) years of age, and I seem to be telling myself the same thing. What do I mean by “growing up” now? Shouldn’t I already be the sophisticated, cultured lady I had been dreaming of becoming? Or would I have to wait until I am fifty?”

He only said that I should have not have to wait until I am fifty. 

But as I mulled it over even at the time of asking, I knew I was referring to the emotional wobbles I go through even now, something like teenage angst, except I was a teenager so long ago and I find it strange and silly that my mind and heart are still stuck in a temporal place that existed a decade and a half ago, of which some faint memories are the only residue. And I am losing time this way, forgetting all the memories we had made in the interim while I still hopelessly hold on to a life lived aeons ago, a past long gone.

I hope some day, some day really soon, I learn to live happily with what and where I am now. So now I look to my right and I am happy to see KrA smiling at something witty or funny he has just read in the Asterix Omnibus 2 that I have got him for our second wedding anniversary. We have three marriage anniversaries although we have been married only twice, but that’s a story for another day.

To end on a happy note, I leave you with some magic from Tanuja Desai Hidier’s Born Confused. I had read this book ages ago and re-read it a few weeks ago over the several days when January hesitatingly prepared to exit and February slowly took over. The book grabbed me by the throat, each scene so vividly portrayed I was swept up in all the emotion, the poignant depth, and literary magic that Born Confused is. 

  • Through my viewfinder she left now, dragging out all the colour and speed and life with her like a bridal train that sweeps up any confettied hopes with it on its way to the honeymoon. 
  • ... a neighborhood called Lake View. It was a bit of a misnomer, considering Mirror Lake was actually a pond, small and man-made, and unless you had eyes that could permeate bark, Pine View was much more along the lines of what you'd be buying into.
  • You know how sometimes you're having a nightmare that's so real you actually feel the brick grate against your skin as you fall from edge to pavement? You open your mouth to scream, lungs heaving against the thin barrier of skin that separates you from that treacherous world and the waking one, but nothing comes out; you try to run but the sidewalk quicksands, suctioning you heel first. And then - you jolt awake. Reality settles upon you like a comforter and you breathe a sigh of relief as it dawns on you that it was all just a bad dream.
  • India was a hustle-bustle place, my mother always said, you couldn't just sit around forever waiting for a quiet moment to crop up to meditate. It worked the other way around: You found your peace through prayer.

And there is so much more. But you ought to read the book for these delights. And oh yes, the author has beautiful eyes of exotic colours.