Let Me Try...

The debris of her life was enough to sever the tie between reality and dreams, the fine line between desire and temptation….. Callie Hunter

She was born on a stormy rainy dark night. Her life turned out to be like one as she grew up. One hell of a storm, etched in the wildest of darkness, all ruffled up and scattered.

After 4 decades of her life, the doors started closing on her face, one by one. They slammed on her face. Slapped, trashed by life, she was crumbling and falling. Yet, she was trying to fight. She was trying to rise from her ashes as she always used to do.

Being emotional, romantic, sentimental, soft-hearted – she was left with a bleeding heart, torn and tattered. Love was something that no longer existed for her. Not something she believed in anymore. In fact, love was one thing she started fearing. Love was traumatizing her. She had built a wall around her – least love comes in from any corner and kills her soul again.

She had taken a stern and stubborn decision for once and for all – she will not commit herself to anyone else again, not allow love any entry into her life again, she will not fall in love ever again.

Through all the storm she was going through, falling, breaking, rising, fighting…she was definitely having men wanting to date her, proposing to have flings, one night stands, sex and what not. At times it became mind boggling, crazy and so hard to handle. One decision, NO MORE, that was it.

Been there, done that. She knew it was high time for her to settle her scrambled life, if at all she could. The least she could afford to do then was get into another relationship. She knew that she did not have the time. Neither the energy. Neither the emotions were alive.  

All of these made her wonder where was it all when she was younger? When she was single? When she could have looked around before deciding to settle down on the man of her life, who disowned her – she didn’t. She committed her life to the relationship and after almost two decades it was all gone.

But Time has its own plans. Time makes it own moves. When the walls were built and her emotions were killed, someone said to her, “let me try.” Someone who was her friend during their teenage days and had some liking for her. Someone who, unlike others did not ask her for anything ever.

When they re-connected, he just wanted to try, to be there, to just walk on. With no commitments, no false promises, no fairy tale dreams.

Decades passed when they hardly communicated with each other, at times with years when they did not even know they existed. He surfaced back out of no-where and they re-connected as friends again. They stayed in different states and cities. They met after ages. She realized that his faith in her was just the same as it was 20 years back. After over two decades, he was just as happy to see her as he was years back.

His indomitable trust in her made her gain the faith she had lost gradually back again. It was some of her true friends who pushed her to go on. And it was him. The light of his unconditional friendship and love at the end of the tunnel. No demands. No taboos. Just being there.

That was again a plan of time. When she was bed-ridden due to an illness, he made it a point to smile at her. He never burdened her with questions about the problems going on in her life, he never gave sermons. The best part of him was he remained himself.

With no dreams for tomorrow, she couldn’t have asked God for someone better than him who would just glide along by her side. 

Hold Your Breath...

Through the journey that I had over the last almost 14 months of my life, I was taking decisions which resulted in all the wrong things happening. There were thousands of things that I was handling at the same time and more often than not, plans were just not working anymore. 

I had some plan in my mind, and situations were changing so drastically that I had to do just the opposite in a matter of few seconds. Or rather the opposite was just happening to what I was contemplating.

I was losing my patience, my temper, getting confused and lost more often than not. At one moment, I was deciding to move in one particular planned direction, taking a particular decision and within seconds/minutes/hours I had to or was forced to do something which was not in my plan and not a part of my decision. 

I did not even know if that step would work for me or not. Well, most of the time, they did not work. They led to further chaos, indecisive confusing moments pushing me backwards instead of enabling me to go ahead.

One by one, they kept piling on. The mistakes, the wrong decisions, the wrong moves, everything seemed to be going wrong. And I was further losing my patience, day by day. During this phase, I kept feeling I had no time in hand. No time to waste. No time to wait. It was like I missed the train and would never get another one.

My brother, who knew all that I was going through, had once told me, ‘Plans do not always work. You plan something and something totally opposite happens. So just move with the flow. With what you have. With makes you. With what you are. And you will find yourself.’

A high school friend of mine, now based in Gurgaon, had told me one day during this phase, ‘Upal, consider you don’t know how to swim (which I actually didn't know) and you have been pushed into the river/sea. You are gasping for breath because you want to survive. You are scared of drowning, of dying. Suddenly your life flashes in front of your eyes and you want to breathe. Whether you live or die, for this one moment, you want to breathe. And you don’t have time. A few seconds is all you have to rise up to the brink and get a breath. So try whatever or however you can to just grasp that one breath. The rest will follow.’

She passed on a light to me with the depth of her thoughts. When I actually was drowning in the sea, without knowing how to swim, (I was actually training in swimming when I was in school but had to leave it due to some reasons, so all that I managed to learn was to float.) So yes, that is what I started trying, I tried to float. Yes, I just had to make it possible to take that one breath, somehow, anyhow.

To just go on, of not being ashamed of myself for anything, not having big dreams about the plans I have in life and just go on with the flow. That’s when a voice from within kept telling me, hold your breath.

For days and months, I kept on trying to do that. I still do. Knowingly. Unknowingly. I lose my breath at times, but again I just struggle to rise up to the brink and breathe for a second. Or else I will drown. I would die. Which I did at times. My mind, my body, my soul. They all needed that one second of oxygen.

After a certain period of time, I realized, that the darkness, the failures, the deep painful wounds also gave me the push to go on. There was some light inside the deepest darkest rooms of myself.

In an era of recycling, nothing goes to waste. Nothing at all. A second of breath, a moment at a time, that’s the least we can do when we are fail and fall. Darkness and light, negativity and positivity - is a perception. A state of the mind. To rise up, to go on, to live – it is a fight in itself and I am doing it in my own way. 

Twist of Time – Revisited

7 months into 2017, in the mid-week of January I was thinking that a big change was happening in my life. I had penned my experiences and feelings in my blog ‘Twist of Time’. A change that was happening after years of a dead dark silence growing inside me.

Come end of January 17, and my world crashed and fell into one of the darkest zones of times. If one reads my first blog on Twist of Time they will know that I was already anticipating a major change in my life. But little did I know that the change will leave such a deep dark wound on me.

It all came one after the other, crashing down like a house of cards. What intrigued me the most is the fact that my mind started playing strange games with me. When we speak of ill-health, 95% of the time we connect it with our physical health. Little do we consider the fact that it is also our mental health that can be affected by what is happening around us.

Our emotional, psychological, and social well-being affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. And when the balance gets disturbed to handle this, we face mental disorders.

When I was touched at 6, again an experience I had penned down in one of my blogs, I was a complete stranger into the world of sexual abuse. How it left its mark and affected my mind was something I realized at a much more latter stage. At 42, out in the world alone, trying to fight a battle for my identity and dignity, I perhaps failed to realize that I am living in a male-dominated and patriarchal society.

Touched again. Sexually abused twice. This time at a workplace where I was looking after Public Relations & Marketing Communications. A place I came to work with a new hope after my long and fulfilling journey with one of Bengal’s leading publication house. The organization I joined in December, was a renowned brand and initially I was feeling that my communication skills were getting better with the job. At the same time, though my personal front was shaky, I was confident I will see through it.

The first time the ex-colleague touched me, I became numb. I remained stiff and evaded him and came out of the official premises. I should have and usually on other normal circumstances would have slapped him on his face but I don’t know what happened to me that I did not react for several days even after the incident. In fact, many times it did not even strike a chord inside me.

But I felt the unrest growing up inside me. Something was happening and I was unable to figure out what exactly it was. Being in this job role was not me. At least not in the hospitality industry being the PR for a group that claimed its authenticity for serving Bengali cuisine. The high-profile official parties I had to attend was not me.

The courtesy calls I had to attend at midnight was not me. Strange however, being in this job role for the first time in my career span of 15 years, my official relation with clients and organizations whom I used to deal with for various official purposes gave me my due respect and co-operated with me always. The people who harmed me the most were the people I was working with, in the same organization. Not all of them of course.

But time was playing games with me and before I understood, I collapsed one day. Hospitalized myself. Diagnosed with a nervous breakdown that triggered lungs infection, brain cells getting affected, so on and so forth.  Even then, I felt I would be fine with rest and treatment. The nervous breakdowns, the panic attacks, the trauma, the constant noises and faces inside my head, the pain..they still linger on like a ghostly shadow. They are not gone. Not yet. Not now.

The stark darkness went on for weeks and months, with me losing control of myself day by day. My mind grew into a puzzle-house and I became nothing less than a zombie.

The treatment, the counseling has helped a lot though. I found a wonderful human being as my counselor. Even today, the man helps me heal the wounds in more ways than one, but yet I feel I have a long way to go to bounce back to life.

A person I loved and choose to live my life with, someone with whom I had developed an estranged relationship over times, stood by my in this darkest hour. He pushed me to stand up and fight for my rights as a woman. When our relationship was falling apart, he was there to remind me of who I am and who I was. The fighter that I was, and someone that was dying inside me.

The fight was more about picking myself up from the internal fall rather than anything or anyone outside. The fight within myself is still on, and I am now just gliding along with time, as it takes me with its flow, heading towards an unknown destination.

If it is was not yesterday, does not mean it cannot be tomorrow. It can be today, it can be now. Its just about the twist of time. 

Twists of Time…

The last few months of the last year changed a big gamut of my life. In fact, it changed many a major aspects and things. I became pressed for time, and though thoughts were moving on in my mind, I was unable to sit and pen them down.

The varied thoughts, incidents, situations happening over the last few months have been mind boggling. I met some amazing human beings, had a deep insight into their thought process which inspired me in many ways specially during my low moments, often having to take impromptu decisions, actually living on the edge, being fearless irrespective of unknown fears gripping me, taking wild risks and so on and so forth.

But the most amazing aspect of this entire time span was the mysterious grasp of fear and thrill along the journey at the same point of time. Mystery has always attracted me, the deep dark unknown secrets of life being engrossing at every spur. Fearful of the darker shadows that have been overpowering my life over the last many years and then becoming fearless overnight came as a shocker to many. Till some great extent, even to myself.

I started wondering if whatever I was doing was for real and couldn’t believe for a long time that I could actually beat my fears and the darker shades, living with them and enjoying the glory of a wild craving to break the walls finally. Fear grips like fire, and rising from one’s own ashes makes one take the reins of life bang on. At times it’s not also important to overcome the darkness, as from there comes a source of light. The habit of living in darkness becomes deeply etched, also strangely giving a sense of vague comfort. One definitely feels blinded with the sudden source of light, living inside a dark room for days. Think of the blind, the physical sight is missing, but their sensations and experiences are vast and varied. So it’s just like that.  

‘The seed of materializing one’s dream has to be sown in the mind, just dreaming is not enough,’ – that is the basic, so I learnt from the lady who lives on the pavement of Chadni Chowk in Kolkata. I was speaking to her sometime in December last year before I said goodbye to my previous organization. She had just lost her new born baby and fighting to survive with her 3 year old daughter and 8 year old son. Those words hit me right across the face, as she made me realize that one has to face life in it’s nude form to live life on the brink.

Like her or Rabia – like many others whose journey gets unnoticed, uncared for, time and again I would love to write for them. For the fire and spark I felt in the amazing illustrator of a magazine, the writer in a newspaper, the manager of a restaurant, the ex-government official and theatre artist, the entrepreneur, the blogger, the photographer, the tea stall owner, the rickshaw puller, the juice maker and many others, life kept telling me time and again, yes! There’s so much to learn, to explore, to do.  

Yes, it is indeed a twist of time for me and I have just started walking on a path again unknown with a strange passion to hug fear and overcome it at the same time.

From one step to another….

After my graduation, I was all ready to study journalism in Delhi. Being the only daughter, my father was hesitant about me moving to Delhi on my own and wanted me to complete my master degree. Well, after the clash of opinions regarding choice of the education path, I ended up getting married to the man I was dating for a year or so in 1998. I started my professional journey after 2/3 years of my marriage. My first job was that of an office assistant in a healthcare company. I worked there for about 2 years. Then I got an offer to join a start-up web development company which was a wing of an established finance organization. That was the first turning point of my professional life as I was blessed with an amazing human being as my boss – who was also my friend, philosopher and guide. All along my journey in the organization, I learned so many important things that build me up as a better professional person and human being. Discipline, co-operation, team work, handling pressure, solving issues, being organized – well, it taught me all. During my job in this organization I also later pursued a diploma in Mass Communication and Journalism. After the course completed, I took due permission from my boss and moved on to make a start in the world of journalism. It was definitely not a cake-walk. I initially started freelancing with Magazines and Newspapers as a feature reporter. I then did an internship with a newspaper house and worked as a feature reporter there. I also worked for advertising agencies as a copy writer for a couple of years. Then I came to The Telegraph as a freelancer in the year 2007. For two years I freelanced with them on various projects, developing and writing content for the same. In 2009, I got into the payrolls and joined The Telegraph, Metro as a sub-editor. I also got a promotion a couple of years back and became the Senior Sub Editor. After working here for almost 9 years, in 2016 December, I took a decision to move on with my professional life and accepted an offer for a job in a different industry with a different job profile.

My journey in ABP, The Telegraph was an amazing one all over. The workplace, the seniors, the collegues, my bosses – everything was a wonderful package. In some special workplaces, the people are more than just colleagues, they are people whom you've enjoyed seeing every day, and whom you will miss when you go. There are many wonderful people here, both past and present, who have made my journey here truly enjoyable and memorable. Working as a team, handling pressure during various assignments, solving issues, sharing, partying, laughing, debating, having personal and professional discussion – we have all done it together.

I feel that we have been through all of the highs and lows together and it is not often that you want to come back to work to spend time with a group of friends. They were all special moments.

Professionally, it is rare to actually discover something new, and it was my privilege to be associated with various teams and projects that enhanced me grow, learn and explore my potentials. From day one, I was provided with various opportunities offered by the organization for professional and personal development.

Each and every one supported me to remain organized and do the real work. I have made great friends and met wonderful colleagues around. Special bonding and friendship developed over the years makes my heart heavy while saying goodbye.

But there is more to the 9 year old journey than just the workplace and the job. The roads and lanes of Chandni Chowk, the aroma of food coming from the nearby food stalls, the adda(chat) sessions that I used to have with my collegues, the friends I made – on the floor, in the tea stall in front of the office, in the ladies washroom, the debates & discussions we had, the smoke I started taking up more frequently, the tea – milk, or black - served in the earthen pots from Mahadev da’s tea stall (tea was one thing I never have at home or outside, the only place I had tea regularly was at this tea stall), the juice man standing on the corner of the Chandni Metro Station, the little girl Pooja who lives in the pavements of Chandni near to our office always waved and smiled at me, an uncle from a automobile shop who used to always talk to me and ask me to quit smoking – there is so more to a place than just brick and motors. The corner of my desk in office, the mementoes I kept on it, the postcards sent to me by my friend from Slovenia, the money plant tree I had taken from the desk of another person who left 6 years back, everything has a story to tell of its own. And today, I will be carrying the stories with me, the relationships with me, just the place and time will change.

Life moves on, we move on, the memories will be etched deep in my heart forever. 

Touched at 6…

It took me a while to finally gather up the courage to write this and finally decide to share the experience of sexual abuse that I faced during my childhood.

In our times, there was no sex education at school, and discussing sex across the table with peers was a taboo. Till some extent I feel it still is, till a great extent despite all the liberation.

In the house where I was born and brought up, we often had relatives visiting us when I was a child. When I was 6, my maternal uncle’s son, touched my body for the first time. I was not in a state to understand what happened, but somehow that memory remains etched in my brain forever. My mother was busy cooking, and he was sitting next to me on the bed and talking to me. Suddenly his hand reached under my pants and I felt his touch for the first time. It lasted for a few minutes and then he told me that this is something I should never share with anyone. And I kept quiet, only because I had no clue to what was happening. He came over to our house again and again, and this is something that continued for quite some time. Somehow, after a certain period of time, it was over and before I could understand, there was a hidden box of mixed feelings that grew inside me as I grew up. Something I could not explain to myself for a very long period of time.

However, after this incident the experiences did not stop. The sexual abuses continued, as there were two other relatives, one my cousin and the other my brother-in-law, who abused me for each time they paid a visit to our house. Touching me, playing with my body, kissing me forcefully, grabbing me, fingering me, and making me touch them. And just not relatives, there were one or two neighbours who attempted and abused me. All that they had to say after each of their sexual exploitation was, ‘hush, hush!’ And maybe by then, I had got into the habit of keeping silent about these events, and no one, including myself, ever maybe thought that something like this could happen to a child, and therefore there was no conversation on this, ever.

At 11, when I started menstruating, my mother gradually became protective about me. Thankfully for her protectiveness, the sexual abuses stopped, but yet I was not able to open up to anyone. After a while, through school and being involved in LTS (A leadership training service), I met someone senior who treated me as his younger sister. He was the first person with whom I was able to gradually share these experiences and incidents and open up to him, trying to deal with the scars. It was he who helped me understand what had happened and enabled me to face myself. Looking back at those faces, moments, experiences only made things worse for me, because they not only harmed me mentally but also affected my physical development. He kept on talking to me, encouraging me to overcome the dark shadows that surrounded me and he also wanted to talk to my parents, but I don’t know why I stopped him that time. I tried many times to speak it out to my parents by myself later, but I was unable to do so. The moments haunted me for long, making my teen phase, much more complicated than it should have usually been.

Those dark moments left me scared, lonely, deserted, scattered, confused, abused and hurt with a sense of overpowering inferiority about myself engulfing me. It took years for me to come out of my shell, to finally break out of those lingering painful moments, moving out of those terrorizing shadows that shrouded my body and mind. However, when I was older and I saw those people eye to eye, it used to give me a kick that they always turned away their face from me. They thought they will break and finish me, and when they saw the bolder side of me, they were unable to face me.

 During my teens, I crossed a phase when I started looking at men as sexual objects. I started feeling proud of my body and thought that I can conquer men with the same. I thought that’s all that they needed, and even today some spineless men behave in that manner, expressing their demoralized sexuality by the thought that they can overpower women by being a male gender.

But I overcame that thought with time, with true strong men as my true friends, their support and conviction and also from strong, powerful female friends who understood the scars left on my soul and accepted me for who I am. And through this process and over times, I enabled myself to be bold enough to say NO to men for sexual pleasure when only they want to have it. Women have the power and the guts to move ahead in a positive way for sex when they want to, and yes, they prove it right.

Come to think of it today, I feel proud of my body and my mind. I feel sexually and mentally empowered, having been able to overpower those dark lone moments of my childhood. Its long I overcame those moments, the weakened soul that I felt because some people touched my body and soul without my permission - turned around to a stronger self. . Maybe it was because of those incidents and experiences; I overpowered the thought process of certain men at a certain point of time, by creating a comfort zone for them and get into their skin and sink in – not to give their demands a priority but to tell them in untold words, Yes, I am a powerful woman, respect me, appreciate me and be a true man if you can. 

Balcony...

A mid-way to a staircase and a common balcony of an almost 70 year old Kolkata building on the main juncture of Park Circus – a place lighted up with the sunshine in the morning and by the evening, turning partially dark with no direct electricity but with rays of light falling on the place from street lights and from other ends that gave it some light. A place I choose to be myself and get into my own skin as I grew up. 

Now no longer a place I used to dwell in, that little place has vast memories associated with it, and became a significant factor of my growing up phase. As a child playing with my childhood mates who lived in the same building, hiding in the corner - crying after getting a scolding from my mother or playing hide and seek with her, as a teenager often standing alone just looking out of the balcony - taking a glance of the busy roads of Kolkata, chatting up with mum or dad about various things on earth or yap across the balcony with the twin sisters living in the opposite building or ever excited to take a one moment glance at the handsome guy passing by the lane of the building - that corner of the building became my place with the passage of time.

The first crush, the first secret smoke during the restless days of my father’s prolonged illness, my first drag of grass, my first sip from a glass of beer and even my first kiss – they all happened in that secret corner of the building, I called my own.

At one point of time, that was the only corner, where I could be myself, with a silent, vacant, lone, dim lighted ambiance, worth it – with no-one to invade into my privacy. After a long day, the moment I used to step into the 3rd floor of the Park Circus house, the first thing I used to do was take a shower, change my dress, take my packet of cigarettes and head one step up to that corner. The peace, the freedom touched me instantly, the moment I stood alone by the balcony for some time, then sit on the vacated staircase at ease – the best moments of my day whenever I visited that house. 

Ya, people might feel what’s special about an old Kolkata building and a stairway corner like this apart from the nostalgia associated with the city! The only reason I choose to share this with my friends and why I feel it’s special, is because of the way that place enabled me to unwind, evolve, analyze and discover the deep dark hidden secrets of my life. Apart from the secret booze, the smoke, the place also became a secret corner for my rendezvous with myself.

The Tandoori Chicken from Zeeshan, the old newspapers rolled out on the stairs, the glass and the bottles kept in the shade, two or three of my friends and myself have sat there and chatted on for hours, deep into the midnight. Day time chat sessions existed too, without the booze of course. The chat sessions, not always were relaxing moments, at times getting serious and philosophical, and varying from my age between 13-40. Debates, serious fights, loud voices have also been raised there. The exchange of love letters when I was a teenager, either given to myself or my friends giving to each other, me being the via media, counselling and being there for friends, apart from myself of course, all of it has happened in that little corner of that house. Thus etching a permanent mark on my soul forever.

That was one place I was nobody’s daughter, nobody’s wife, but just myself. Yes, I did connect with my friends who shared moments with me there chatting up, but mostly I would look forward to the instant my-time, I got being there. Though the intensity of emotions associated with that corner grew with my loneliness after I lost dad, it was also a place where I would rush to reach to overcome the same. My mother was always aware that I was up there and all that she used to say was either “don’t smoke much like your dad” or “don’t wake too late into the night”.  My connection continued with that place after my mother’s death too, it was like I just wanted to be left alone and just shut out from the world outside me. Not for depressing moments, but for a deeper insight.

Whether I felt like crying, smiling, laughing, venting out my anger, falling in love -  that place allowed me to emote without any inhibitions. But eventually practicality hit emotions, and I had to surrender the house to the landlord about a year back, that corner no longer remaining I could rush to. But a house is more than bricks and motors, it is the voices and the memories and the experiences that remains much after the ruins.