Raising a toast to myself..

I just realized that this happens to be my 101th post. Although unread, unpopular and irregular I believe in a little celebration..So I am going to wear my hair down and ride off into the night.
A presto.
 

Alla

Forty one bloody degrees. With my lemon flavored Fresh Wipes almost nearing exhaustion, I finally decide to step outside the car and wait inside the premises of the clinic. Government run organizations barely provide any respite from the heat (except if you happen to be a politician ie) but I decide to take my chances anyway.

My doc friend signals me a I'll be there in ten and I sit down on one of creaky chairs in the waiting room under the wailing fan and wait.I glance at the local language newspaper lying in front of me and when I realize that I can't read a decent sentence without dissecting it disrespectfully, my shame gets the better of me and I look away.

'Alla? Get back here.'

My first impression of Alla is that of an eleven year old, it is only later that I learn that she is actually twenty two. Her beanstalk like figure patiently waits at the gate and her bony fingers break a crisp biscuit into four neat parts. She hurls those at the stray dogs now gathering around her. The dogs meanwhile trying hard to conceal their surprise at being fed this morning, or any morning for that matter, regard the biscuit pieces with some suspicion. Nonetheless after some sniffing around they quite relish the feel of cream and sugar. They look at her greedily for more, their tails up in the air ready to start wagging as a token of their appreciation. But somewhere in the depths of her tiny brain Alla is disgusted at being regarded with suspicion. She frowns and walks back inside.

Alla is wearing a screaming red blouse that adorns shiny buttons at odd places. It sticks to her and from afar she looks almost flat chested. Below is a terribly long black skirt with pint sized plastic coated mirrors at regular intervals. Wherever she goes, she has to drag herself along to get moving and yet she seems to leave something behind. It indicates her lack of confidence. Her hair is pulled back firmly into a pony that looks ready to be ripped off her head. She looks quite healthy by ordinary standards and beautiful even if it only weren't for the harelip. Her eyes are curious,ovoid and coffee colored.

Ears and nose all well and nicely proportioned.

Only the prescription that she is fiddling with is a bit disturbing so as to speak of.

Chlorpromazine (Largactil)

Haloperidol 10 mg twice daily.

While her mother keeps her baby brother from crying, Alla is folding her prescription paper until there is nothing left of it. How she wishes it just goes away. Once, twice, thrice and there..almost gone. Her mother catches her doing what she is doing and furiously smacks the back of her head while snatching the piece of paper away from her.

Alla is red faced and close to tears. An insult she would remember for quite sometime now. Days even, weeks perhaps. Months later when even the slightest memory of the event has faded to dust, Alla would wake up crying because she just wouldn't forget.

Alla shows the classic symptoms of schizophrenia. It doesn't stop at that she also suffers from a severe version of obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety. And to think I jokingly referred to myself as an obsessive compulsive maniac, I clearly had no idea what I was talking about.

Alla is terrified of switchboards, my doc friend continues unfazed by my reaction. She thinks that there is someone watching her through those holes. Keyholes are terrifying too, so are cracks and half open curtains. They are all watching. She has actually cello taped every crack and hole back home. She hasn't even spared the toilet seat. Sometimes she won't even go out because she thinks maybe they are watching her though the sky!

While all this sounds like an interestingly high on LSD experience to us, think about what a nightmare it must be for poor Alla.

Alla stands on the brink of a volatile future. Her family can't afford psychiatric treatment, only drugs sometimes to keep her down. Luckily for Alla there are quite a few NGO's that have sprung up as of late and that are championing the cause of mental health and related issues. Alla's parents aren't really convinced of the promise and the future they seem to offer. They want her married off as soon as possible so that she would become someone else's headache. This family of six survives on the father's meager wages as a tailor.

There might a have been nights when Alla must have stayed awake for hours together, while the fear of somebody being out to get her continued haunting her.

Reality escapes her Kafkaesque imagination.

For Alla and the like, happiness lies at the bottom of the chest, covered by layers of guilt, doubt, suspicion and insecurity.

I hope she finds it someday.

Meanwhile the family is wondering at what cost should they bear the burden of this madness that they can never really understand.

'As long as she doesn't kill anybody' says her mother.

I'm thinking..

I am thinking what it is like for youngsters like ourselves to grow up in a confusing and distorted culture of thought and paranoia where the choice to believe or not to is constantly being threatened by the likes of popular culture on one hand and enduring toxic tradition on the other.

I am thinking to what point could our judgements regarding sexuality, freedom, morality, pathos and life be stretched until broken or scarred.

I am thinking at what precise point did the killer think it was alright to shoot and kill.

I am saying this because everyday we are faced with a choice - of seeing a man die, a child beg and a woman fall. Of going to work and not caring, of turning on the telly that displays a plethora of  accidents, affairs, scandals, calamities and realizing that these people on those screens are just like you, and just like you they believe that a good breakfast could start off the day with great enthusiasm and so would a good night's sleep. You could smile at the waiter and not know he doesn't have a home to go to and you could smile at the foxy secretary not knowing that she gets beat up by her man.

Very Quoteable indeed.

Better drunk than a whore I'd say.

-Anthony Hopkins in Short cut to happiness.

Before I left.

I imagined pretty much of a party before I left the city. Endless coffee, conversations and hugs with people I thought I truly cherished. Quite contrary to that the days grow on me while I sit at home. Seems like I have managed to wrap up an extra layer of flesh on me. The other day I read Fireflies in the Garden by Robert Frost.

And I just thought I'd put it in here : Not because I think it has some queer sort of a significance and certainly not because I think I can relate to it but becasue I simply love it

Having just said that I realize the that I have taken the longest time ever to get there- halfway into the gist of those very lovely words.  In the course of an ordinary and rather boring day how many of us do things purely for the love of it? I wouldn't be needing any more fingers than the ones already adorning my pale little hands to make that count.

Fireflies in the Garden

by Robert Frost.

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies

And here on earth come emulating flies

That though they never equal the stars in size

(And they were never really stars at heart)

Achieve at times a very star like start

Only ofcourse they can't sustain the part.

So I am going to keep doing what I do well or atleast I am going to keep trying.So should you.

Crumbling paper

Honey its called a writer's block and its not fantasy fiction.

I am currently under repair and on the road to recovery.

Eat well.

Sleep well.

Be well.

& Don't let the heat get to you.

The color of memory - Geoff Dyer

What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you in your loneliest loneliness and say to you : 'This life as you live now, live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh and everything unutterable small or great in your life will have to return to you all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and moonlight between the trees and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again and you with it, speck of dust!'

Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him,
'You are a God and never have I heard anything more divine!'