As I touched death for a moment...

I touched death today,
for a moment,
it had the smell of people's voices
someone screaming,
a woman cried.
A taste of blood rolling down the cheeks,

'Is it ok to wipe out the blood of the stranger without plastic gloves that would provide atmosphere sterile enough to prevent the transmission of a deadly disease?'

Cerebral thinking took over,
Ice, bring ice.
bring ice and keep it on the neck.
Bring ice and keep in on the forehead.
Ice stops bleeding,
Ice stops pain,
Ice stops my fear,
Ice stops me from breathing in the helplessness of the situation.
Ice stops my feelings and allows me to think clearly for a moment in the crowd of people.
Ice, someone bring ice, please.

Can you look at my finger? can you look at my finger? can you look at my finger?
Blink if you hear me.

Can you look at me? Can you finally look at me? Can you see me and who I am?
Can you give me a sign that you hear?

Now that the ambulance came
and the crowd dispersed
I am sitting on my bed
as a tiny finger of death pokes my arm.
And I get scared of people screaming,
of not having space to breathe,
of the pain in my head,
of the grotesque of the singular experience in the crowd...

And I ask death
that when she comes back again
she could please choose the time when a cat curls at my feet
and you hold my hand in a quiet space of the house
and the ice melts quietly and drips down your cheek
but your eyes are still looking into mine long after I seize to see the last ray of the falling sun.
Good night.

To that 16 year old boy who whispered 'I want to fuck you' at 8pm at the traffic lights

To that 16 year old boy who whispered 'I want to fuck you' at 8pm at the traffic lights....

It hurt for a moment,
I was walking down the street engrossed in my thoughts...
I was loving my work at that moment,
and then your words pierced the balloon.

I looked back but I was unable to see you, there were too many people crossing the street and the traffic began to move.

So I walked.
I walked ahead and my thoughts have changed,
for a moment...

For a moment I felt hurt, dirty, sleazy, helpless...

And I walked.
I was walking ahead and with each step the pierced balloon began to fill itself up again.
it was not magic.
it was real...
and I began loving myself, my body and my work even more...

You see, dear boy...

you are a coward.
You whispered those words behind my back and didn't even wait for my response.
I feel angry with you, dear boy, for having deprived me of a chance of telling you this into your face.
Real men do not behave this way.
Real men have courage to face the consequences of their actions.

you are illiterate.
You see, dear boy, real men don't fuck.
They give pleasure and they are given pleasure, they look deep in the eyes and words get stuck in their throat when they see their women's beauty.
And if your father had failed to teach you that, dear boy, then I feel sorry for you. Your life must have been really Fucked till now that it turned you into such a weakling.

Thank you, dear boy, for having found my body attractive.
I am more than double your age... I am that maths teacher who failed you last year for you did not study hard enough, I am that woman whose driving skills are better than yours, I am that woman who went to the engineering college while you failed in your exams, I am that woman who runs a company where your father works, I am that policewoman who protects cowards like you from being robbed....
And we love our bodies... For we are beautiful... tall, short, skinny, overweight, long hair, short hair, curly hair, thighs, hips, ankles, calfs, shoulderblades, neck... We are all beautiful.
At 38 my body is capable of much more than yours ever will, for I value myself... For my body has been subjected to the gaze of unmanly cowards like you and it hated itself for a moment until one day both I and my body have decided: stop. enough. restructure the values.

My balloon is bright, dear boy, I hold it with pride as I walk down the street. And I love my work and body even more at the moment...
You see, dear boy, my work has the power of words and thoughts that are slightly more sophisticated than the 5 word sentence structure of your reptilian brain.
And I am going to use the words I have. I am going to use them to let 16 year old girls know that they are beautiful, that they are worthy, that they do not need anyone to protect them from cowards like you because they are stronger than you anyways... And those 16 year old girls shall grow to become real women, who will know who real men are, and those men will love them and they would feel loved by them.

And you , dear boy, will turn into bitter, unloved coward who will never learn who a woman is.

Three unrelated encounters

1.

For

even if I try to paint you in black

I fail 

and the broken glass of unfinished wine spills colours all over.

I am falling.

D

o

w

n.

                                            p.

The direction is down not u

She held me tight last night.

It hurt as a tiny piece of a broken glass rubbed against my skin.

Wine spilled on the floor.

I watched the colours as they held me softly with someone else's arms.

I enjoyed the touch.

It puts me to sleep and I curl like a cat.

it found the glass and put the band-aid on.

A tear rolled down my cheek.

I felt lost for words,

I jumbled them like feelings.

Confused, attached, hurt, angry, lost, longing, peaceful.

Sleep came in the morning. 

A cup of coffee on the table at 6am.

Good night.

2.

We walked as the time went by,

Step by step with us...

Through the times that remain only in the memories of green pastures that we once had.

I saw them in a dream last night.

Green, wide, singing of freedom and equality.

They went past my window.

I saw the reflection of his face inside the cab. 

A leash on his neck,

as I waited for the wind to take me away from the choking noise of evening chaos.

The wind has not come as yet,

So I waited patiently for a bus.

They marched silently with a string through their necks and nostrils.

 I looked at them and they knew.

3.

Awake,

yet half dreaming,

Today

I shall, I shall, I shall,

I shall try not to spread the wings but,

but keep them hidden,

Keep them safe,

safe,

safe 

from the wind that could bring the storm.

Sometimes.

For a moment,

I allow you to catch a glimpse of the feathers.

Grey.

And then you fail to notice that it was time to catch my hand.

We get up and split the bill.

We both fly away with the memories of grey colour of the sky before the rain.

You are so beautiful,

And so are you.

It was not a windy day

It was not a windy day,
and still somehow
My hair entangled in a kiss...

It was not a windy day, and so
there was no question whether the end of my sari would fly away...

It was not a windy day, and so
His hands were still,
and there was no need to take out the safety pin and keep it open and pointed and say 'no, I don't want to'.

It was not a windy day,
and still somehow
 my hair entangled in a kiss
 my hair entangled in a kiss
my hair entangled in a kiss
my hair entangled in a kiss
my
          hair
    entangled
                                 in
a
                        kiss...

I shut the weather forecast off.

That other world out there

They came uninvited.
         The sounds of civilization staring at me from outside the kitchen window.
They pumped the words into my body
         drilling an always-polite-response to the questions of my food habits:
'What-did-you-eat-for-breakfast-today?'

Pressure cooker whistled for the fifth time that moment and I began to scream out loud the elements of my diet in a reversed alphabetical order.
(Munch would have been so proud of me that day)

But...

(And this 'but' is vivid and precise in the curves of its lines)  But...

But...

But there was that other world out there...
But there was that other world out there that we spoke about so often over a glass of cheap wine
(Rs 130 a bottle if I am not mistaken)

It had the blue colour of the sky
and redness of the mother below my bare feet.
It had a tree outside the window
and a cat chasing the squirrel that was climbing up the branches.
It had a long evening walk by the river
and a night with stars engrossed in the music of the piano.
It had vast spaces to walk through
and a clay pot filled with words drunk lazily and without haste.
It had breath.

I breathed with my eyes closed
while a part of me stood up and closed the doors from the other side leaving the walls to shut down on themselves and collapse.

A seed sprouted in my hand.

About special needs

Living in the world where we all need to constantly move faster and faster in order to be able to cope with the demands of society and economy leaves a toll on each one of us. We tend to feel stressed with the long working hours, with being underpaid, with not being appreciated for our efforts, with not being seen as individuals but as parts of a larger system.

People with special needs may not be working in a corporate sector, they may not be lawyers appearing in court fighting for extremely important causes, or may not be striving to get funds for their own start-up, however the pressure they live under and the stress and frustrations that they experience can be equally difficult for them to deal with.

I recently felt frustrated after having been rejected one more time by the artist residency program, I questioned the sense of applying for something again and began to wonder whether there is any point in trying at all. Someone else might feel frustrated with not being able to recall the spelling of one's own name. Two different situations, two different people, yet perhaps the amount of effort we both put into our writing a good project and writing the name is the same? And perhaps both of us want to finally make it good this time and not to have to face the disappointment and frustration again.

We all have the same needs that need to be met for each of us to be able to live a thriving and healthy emotional life.

Few years back I was standing at the school corridor just after the lunch break. The bell rang and I was watching adults standing around a class 3 student who was diagnosed with a genetic disorder. She was walking slowly towards her classroom, too slowly and so the adults began telling her that she needs to walk faster. It was my first active experience of empathy as I was trying to imagine what this situation might have looked like from the perspective of the child. It must have been scary I felt. It must have felt scary and powerless to be standing among people twice her size and be rushed to walk with the speed that was too fast for her to handle.

It must feel equally scary and frustrating to be an elderly person being rushed to eat faster and spill less soup onto the table when the hand is shivering.

We all have the same basic human needs and one of them is ability to be seen for who we are as beings and not for the actions that we are able to perform with sometimes better, sometimes worse results. We all want to be loved and appreciated, we all need warmth, friends, sense of belonging.

I do not want my friends to judge me on the basis of how successful I am as a professional. A child with special needs wants to have friends to play with irrespective of whether he/she is able to score the goal during the football match. As a child I was never good at sport – I would always be the last person to be chosen by any team. It felt embarrassing and frustrating to be the last one taken into the team...every week of my primary school.

I live in a place where many people believe I do not understand the language they speak. It happened to me a couple of times that people would talk about me in a rude way thinking that I would not be able to understand their words. But I did... and it hurt. It made me feel like an object. People with special needs may look different sometimes or behave in a different way, however, it does not mean that they are completely unable to understand the tone of voice or words that are being used while talking about them. They do understand...

Life is often stressful for many of us. As humans we are very often programmed to experience negative emotions in a stronger way than the positive ones in our lives, even though the latter once may be actually be larger in number. Positive emotions are often experienced in a milder, more subdued way and so we need them more frequently. Perhaps while dealing with individuals with special needs we could try to concentrate on strengths more than on the weaknesses?

That class 3 student I mentioned a few sentences above... she managed to stand in the vrkshaasana (tree pose) in a yoga class one day... And that day the whole class clapped for her... She performed great! 30 seconds of balance! And I think she felt like a great achiever that day, the way you or I do after a performance, good session, promotion at work.