Travails of Travel

"Women take longer time to dress up than men." 

This is something that we often tell as a joke. Mostly to indicate the amount of time to put makeup, choose matching clothes, then finding shoes matching those clothes and the list goes on. And men, we dress up just like that, less than 5 minutes. Ever wondered why that is so. Why does women need so much time to figure out what to wear. 

The answer to this question came when I was discussing something completely different with my friend. Earlier today some of my female friends were telling about the experience that they had while travelling in train. They were telling how much they hated sleeping in the lower berths, even side upper where they would be constantly touched "accidentally" by fellow male passengers. They told about how men who walked through the compartment pressed their legs or tickled them while sleeping. They were telling me how they dreaded travelling in train. 

Later today, I was discussing the same thing with my friend. That is when she told me about how she had to choose our clothes appropriately while she travel. Unlike men, she can't just choose really comfortable clothes for travel. She has to think about the stares she is going to suffer through. She even told about a time when she tried to remove her belt before sleeping, and and how all the male eyes started scanning her. She has to always think about how well her tee is tucked inside her pants and that nothing is showing. She always has to worry about bending in front of someone. She has to choose her clothes in such a way that no part of a body is exposed. No wonder women takes much time to decide which clothes to wear, because men make them feel unsafe. 

It doesn't just end with clothes. They always have to be wary about the people they talk to in train. They always have to put their guard up. She was telling me that she was afraid to even respond to a friendly conversation initiated by a fellow passenger, lest his intentions get creepy after sometime, which happens more than we think. What else, if fellow passenger actually start behaving like that after she started talking with him, the rest of the passengers won't come to her aid thinking they are friends or something. 

There is no point in blaming or shaming women telling that they take time to dress. Unlike men, they have to protect themselves from a thousand creepy eyes everyday, every hour, every second. 

Patriarchy has to be destroyed for women to truly be free.

Wish

If I was granted a wish
I know what would be mine.
The wish I have all day
The same I have all night.
To fill your heart with joy
With my presence, sight and voice.
To see your smiling eyes
When your fingertips meets mine.
And enchanting you feel
When my lips seek your cheek.
And warmth fills your chest
On me you lie to rest.
I wish to be your 'want',
The one you dearly miss.
With such a wish I wait
And wait and wait and wait.
No genie, fairy, witch, or tree
Or stars can make it true
Still I wish, every day, every night,
And cherish with all my might,
For nothing more precious, dear
Than your happiness at my sight.

Broken

I am a broken piece. I always was. I always wished for someone to pour affection into the cracks and make it disappear. I would imagine how it would feel like, no not be broken, mended. But everytime the cracks just got deepend. Maybe there is no being whole for me again, beyond repair. I realize that things are wrong inside me completely, it's not just the surface that is cracked. The damage runs deeper. There is no hope for being alright anymore. All I await it the day it all breaks apart completely and disintegrate. I just want to be able to hold on a bit longer. Just a little bit.

On the inadequacy of Love

We have lots of people say about the kind of love they desire. The way they want someone to love them. They use words like "unconditional", "selfless" etc. But do they only desire that love. I believe it is incomplete to say that just receiving such kind of love, care, attention or affection they seek from someone is enough. It is much more important as who they receive it from, a point that is sometimes ignored in most cases. Its not just that they want this kind of love, they want it from a specific someone who satisfies certain criteria, which can be and almost always is, different from person to person.

There is a certain misconception in society that "true", "genuine" love will be rewarded always with acceptance in the end, mostly circulated through literature and media. This kind of love from the wrong person can actually cause the receiver to be more irritated than happier. 

Care, and concern can be irritating if it not from the person who we don't want it from. It can cause unwanted nuisance and disturbance to our peace. Admiration and attention, even recognition from this person will feel suffocating. A compliment on the way you look today, a gift, even a small thing that should have made the moment special from the right person will create the exact opposite effect. So it is not the acts of love that matters, it is also who does these acts which makes it special and valuable to that person. Anyone else who tries to engage in these acts will end up failing to make the person feel good or special, or even loved, as they only consider these annoying. The "charm" of  these gestures only appears if enacted or performed by the person who they want it from.

Unfortunately, the person who loves us sometimes wouldn't satisfy our criteria. They might be inadequate in different ways. This person believing his love to be true and selfless will continue to try to make us feel special and continuously annoys us. They end up receiving the blunt of anger most of the time and have no clue what they did wrong. Therefore, it is important to understand that love is itself is not adequate, but also whether the person who performs satisfies the other requirements the receiver needs or desires. 

I believe that a person who loves in a genuine sense, only cares about the receiver. They don't expect to be loved back, for they love unconditionally because they believe the receiver deserves to be loved like that. They will do anything to make the receiver feel special, important, deserving and happy. But sadly, the act in itself is incomplete when the performer is inadequate. They will keep on trying to improve themselves, change, try different means but fail to meet the objective. They too will hope at some point, for the sake of their lover, that the reciever find someone else  who is adequate and capable of delivering or performing these same acts and attaining the objective. This person will still love and care, maybe from a distance, for he can't stop loving, drawback of the "genuine" love. And he can't come too close, for he will fail to make the lover happy. He is forever caught in the eternal immobility that he can't get out of, maybe which he himself doesn't want to. He will make himself believe that his happiness lies in being able to even feel such a love, even if he fails to deliver it or receive it. 

Letter of Apology

You know those moments you have in your life when you identify something about you, something that you never thought that you would do or say, and you can't believe that you did that; I had that moment today. It made me rethink my beliefs, my perspectives, about my own sub-conscious thoughts and how I reinforced ideas that I was adamantly against. It made me realize how wrong I am and kind of lost respect for myself for even having that thought or making that mistake "casually".
Today, I bought a bottle of cough syrup in the morning, but I was unable to open the cap as it was too tight. I asked my friend for a knife or blade when she came from her room to cut the cap and open it. When she came, she asked me for the bottle and tried to open it. I was sure that she wouldn't be able to open it and to my surprise, she not only opened it, but did it with ease. She smiled at me and taunted me for not being able to open it myself, as all good friends do. But then, she asked me to remember this next time when I offer to hold her bag. Maybe she was making me realize that she was physically as strong as me, maybe even more. I understand that, but it didn't bother me, I never offered to help her carry her bags because I thought she was weak. We are basically of equal strength physically and I never assumed to be a strong person myself. I offered to help because I cared for her. There is this patriarchal belief of men being physically stronger than women and gaining their masculinity from doing such acts that shows their superior strength, which apparently gives them a higher status in masculinity scale. There are instances in popular media showing women running to men to open jars, do heavy tasks requiring strength or carrying heavy loads. This demonstration of  physical strength as a masculine trait reinforces this patriarchal belief. I never accepted patriarchal norms and practices and was comfortable with the incident that happened today. But then I told her that I don't gain my masculinity from my physical strength, but from my other talents like my speed, analytical ability and drawing skills. Suddenly, she pointed out something which I didn't think at all. She asked me why I call these my masculinity symbols. All these things can be found in females too. Then she told me I associated masculinity to my confidence. It was like I considered everything that gave me confident as masculine. If that is to be true, she said, and assuming confidence is a masculine trait, what about women who are confident. I was completely stunned by what I had said and taken aback by her quick critical response. I am happy that she pointed it out. It was a fault in my thought that I was completely unaware of which she noticed.
Women are confident, skilled, and strong. We can't assign a gender to these qualities. Confidence doesn't come from being a particular gender. But I understood that patriarchy tries to portray many of these qualities as masculine traits so that just being a male in society gives you confidence even without having the required skills. It also takes away the confidence from women, because even if they have the required talents, they are not considered capable of developing them because of its association with gender norms. They are constantly forced to believe that they are weaker, less intelligent, incapable just because these traits are masculine. The norms and practices of the society actually reinforces this belief.
I believed myself to be a feminist. But once I made this statement, I don't think I deserve to be called one. I am completely ashamed for making that statement. All my life I have met women more confident than me, talented than me, intelligent than me, and superior to me in all ways and respected them for that. I consider it to be an insult to them for making such a statement. The fact that I did make such a statement makes me realize how much the patriarchy has gone into my head, that if I don't put serious thought into my actions, it might turn out be sexist.
I apologize to all the strong confident talented women out there who battles patriarchy everyday. You try to remove the notions of gender norms and break the shackles that pulls women back. It is guys like me who still hold on to the old customs that tries to chain you up, who doesn't want to lose our power in society. As long as feminism comes as naturally and involuntary to men as patriarchy does now, this fight should go on.

Loneliness

"I am lost. Help me brother. Save my life before my doom. I am lost without your love. Save my soul, seek my room."

What is loneliness. True loneliness. I am an introvert, so I understand solitude. Solitude is nice, its comfortable, we need solitude. To be alone in our own space, immersed in own thoughts, it is one of the best feelings. To spiral down into deeper layers of imagination and analysis. Synthesizing possibilities about events and thinking about new ideas. Everything is good about solitude. But loneliness is an entirely different thing. You need solitude for yourself, to spend some time on your thoughts without any interference.

Loneliness is when you want to communicate and there is no one to listen or understand. There are circumstances when you want to know how others perceive your thoughts, get a feedback, provide new insights, generate contradictory views or maybe, simply understand the complexities that you are trying to comprehend. Inability to find someone who listens and respond is a kind of loneliness.

There is also a different kind of loneliness, where nobody can understand you because nobody is trying to. Most of the times they can’t try because the things are too complex for them. Maybe they are not even aware that you need them to try and figure something out. Maybe you are afraid that opening your mind might be the Pandora’s box will just drive them away. But when you have so much thoughts and questions inside you that you really want to share, it’s really difficult when you don’t find anyone to share it with. You gently learn to keep all these thoughts in some dark corner of your mind and focus on other things. But sadly, with time, things pile up and the only way to deal with them is to ignore them. Consider them as useless and low priority, just because there is no one in your life who have the ability, or the will to understand it. But the fact remains that these thoughts are important. You are just unfortunate that no couldn’t find anyone and that is the feeling of loneliness.

You rarely meet people who have the ability to understand these thoughts. Even when you do, it is rare to establish a level of trust and mutual admiration to finally open up these core ideas which are so volatile and demands intense effort. The funny thing is, they might have the same problems that you face and you can see how similar they are to you and how much they need to be understood. But there might not be a reciprocity in the process because they might not understand yours. With time, you tend to lose hope of ever being truly understood by sharing these core ideas. You build a cage for these thoughts inside so that they don’t pester you in your solitude so that you can be free to pursue other demanding works. This leads to loneliness.

When you are finally sure that you can never share these thoughts with anyone, you tend to detach from people. You will start to find peace in your solitude more often, slowing reducing your communication with people. People see this and feel that you are becoming less social or even anti- social. From your side, people are failing to reach you and you don’t want to waste time with them. This will slowly grow into a general alienation from society as a whole. You finally don’t want to interact with anyone because they are useless. Your solitude will become your sole peace and you will be isolated from all.

That is true loneliness.

When people you expect from, fail to reach you, you become lonely.

“You are high above us all, alone in the sky and you understand everything except how to land.”

Intelligence Vs Beauty

I was sitting in the café today and wondering the differences in beauty perceptions between people that I noticed the differences between south and north Indian girls. According to the conventional sense of beauty, north Indian girls are way more hot than south Indian ones, statistically. The moment I thought this, I was hit by this amazing revelation about how our society sees beauty as a concept. It’s a concept that everyone understands, its universal, everyone likes it, respects it, secretly or openly admire it, though still society has a certain hesitation in admitting it.

Why? Sometimes I wonder. It is a really powerful sense that drives our life. Everyone wants to look beautiful. And it’s okay. There is nothing wrong in that. Some people are genetically gifted with natural beauty. But now I see a difference here. If some kid is born with a genetic gift of music, art, literature or mathematical ability, we call them a prodigy. But we don’t call a naturally beautiful kid a prodigy, why? How is a genetic gift of intelligence any different from a genetic gift of beauty? Both were not the result of the kid’s efforts or hard work. Both should be treated equally. I know that people don’t like to treat beauty with same respect as intelligence because they feel that beauty is something that fades with time. But doesn’t that make it more valuable.

Kids are always taught to love someone without going for the looks or beauty. Even though it’s a fact that it is never followed, why do they tell them that. Nobody ever tells a kid to not to consider intelligence when trying to choose a partner. Most parents might actually want their kids to choose the most intelligent ones. Isn’t that a double standard against beautiful people. Why does intelligence get a higher status than beauty if both were obtained from the same genetic lottery?

The people who are born beautiful also face a lot of insecurities. They have a gift that they know will deteriorate over time and they have to make the most out of it within the time they got. Imagine a brilliant person suddenly losing his memory and cognitive functions, imagine a musician losing their voice. Only if you analyze the situation, you will understand the horror completely.

Another is the problem of always doubting whether people are attracted to them because they are pretty or because they have other abilities. They are taught that it is a bad thing if they are just appreciated for their beauty. They are always taught beauty alone is insufficient. Nobody teaches something like that to intelligent people.

All the people I am talking about are people who are born with these gifts, this article is not about those who acquired these abilities with time and effort. Also, when I mean beauty, I mean physical beauty. People keep saying beauty is subjective and all those crap, but I mean conventional beauty, not the internal beauty people keep talking about.

It’s time we give some credit to beauty and people who are born with it.