Finding my Hiraeth

    My boyfriend tells me that living with your people in your home state feels different...that there is nothing like it. His ultimate aim is to find a decent-paying job that allows him to shift back to Assam (our home state), and while that's completely okay and suits his preferences, it's not mandatory that I feel the same way. Over the years of being in a relationship and seeing couples around me, I developed the opinion that it takes compromises to make things work in a long-term relationship. And while I've seen ambitious wives willingly leave their high-paying jobs (often higher than their husbands) to raise the kids, I don't see them being exactly 'happy' about it. These women, for the sake of their families and everything that patriarchy expects of women, sacrifice their dreams, their preferences, and their ideal bodies and then go around selflessly serving the ones they love. Three years ago, I was halfway there, with these women, in a place where sacrifice came naturally to me, but not anymore.

    My university education has exposed me to a new class of women—the ones who have it all—families, kids, jobs, friends, freedom, independence, and everything else. I've also seen women with a few of these many things willingly chosen or removed from their lives—job satisfaction and luxury minus a husband, or perhaps a great job and a loving husband minus the kid....and it all works for them; they seem 'happy,' unlike the above scenario where sacrifice makes everyone happy but the self. This post is not about feminism; I have too little knowledge on the subject to write a blog post on it.

    It's a Saturday today, a weekend, and I woke up at 5:21 a.m. (about the usual time). Then, I willingly chose to stay in bed and catch another round of sleep. As is the case with morning sleep, the best nap happened from then until about 9:30 a.m. I was content. I could have left the bed then, but I chose to break the early morning cycle, with it being the weekend and me having nothing better to do and all of that. So, I decided to finish the film I began watching the previous night. By the time I was done with the movie, it was 11 a.m. So, I finally left the bed. I made myself some tea and had it with half a packet of Marie Biscuits (this combo is my all-time favourite). While doing all of this, a thought came to me: I should go out. It has been three days since I left the house, and while the inner traveller wants to step out and explore Guwahati, two very logical problems stop me: firstly, the stupid humidity and heat of the place, and secondly, I don't want to spend my money. So yeah, the overpowering voice in my head that constantly tells me to YOLO it away has suddenly succumbed to reason, and I am simply amazed. This has never happened before, at least not while I was in Hyderabad and Bangalore. I know that reason is the better friend; the proof remains in my fewer travel stories in Shillong. I just didn't want the same thing to happen while I was out there in a metropolitan city so I had made an unofficial pact with myself that for the brief period that I was away from Assam, I would make the most of everything and travel as much as I could, hang out with people from different states, gather knowledge from them, exchange cultural experiences, etc.

    

    But here we are, three years later, back in the home state where reason has a better chance of sustaining itself than YOLO wale feelings. So yeah, I am saving money and choosing not to step out much. My parents were here for two days, and I had to go out a lot with them, but now there's very little reason for me to step out. I have even switched back from Instamarting and BigBasketing everything home to going to the local shop and getting stuff. A major lifestyle change is happening here, and I'm not exactly unhappy about it. But because of all of this and the fact that I'm here for my Ph.D. and that I should be engaged with books and research rather than idling my time and money away on the streets, I have switched to a low-key life. If you follow my Instagram stories and post captions, you'll remember that lately, my life has been very unstable and that I've constantly been on the move. I have prayed for things to slow down, for some permanence and stability, and I have also feared that the stability would make my life dull and make me all gloomy, like my childhood and lockdown days.

    So, this morning, when I woke up and had the mental monologue of whether I should go out, I realized that the fear was materializing. I am stable but not happy about it. Turns out, I was happiest when I was living out of a bag in an unknown land, adjusting, trying local food, making reels and stories, travelling, seeing the world, and just living freely. That I realized is my hiraeth. The dictionary defines hiraeth as 'a deep sense of longing, a yearning for that which has passed.' It is homesickness and yearning for a home or loved place. But having found my hiraeth and looking at its definition, I feel the need to dig deeper into the subject because what I crave is far from the definition of hiraeth or that which my boyfriend craves. He craves home and all that's known and familiar, whereas I find bliss in the unknown, the anonymity, and the fear of being lost in a sea of lost.

    Hiraeth is a longing for a home or homesickness of some sort. But who decides the definition of home? Home could mean different things to different people. Home could be a feeling or a person, too. So, what’s home for me, I wonder? I finally realized that for me, home is any place where I am alone with strangers; home is a comfortable room with all my essentials and a deep desire to travel, write, click, and exist. Home to me is a room and a feeling. Google tells me that this longing that I have for a faraway place is called fernweh and is actually the opposite of hiraeth. Shocking, isn’t it?

    Now, the dictionary defines fernweh as ‘a desire to go to faraway places.’ It’s wanderlust of some sort. While I agree that my yearning is for a faraway land, an unknown place that I eventually fall in love with, it’s also my home. So, could the opposites be the same under certain circumstances? Could my hiraeth be my fernweh, and vice versa? In my case, the answer is yes.

    At the beginning of this post, I talked about how people compromise in relationships. My decision to relocate to Guwahati was something close to a compromise, a compromise not just for the long-term feasibility of my romantic commitments but also for my filial duties. However, two weeks down the road, I see myself deeply unhappy. I know it's too soon to discard a beginning, for beginnings are often rough. But a part of me has realized over the last two weeks that I may not ever be entirely happy with a place again, and I have accepted that too. When has life ever been perfect for anyone? Some parts of our lives are more special than others, and some memories are evergreen while others instantly fade, and that's what makes them precious. Change eventually catches up, no matter how fast we are at running towards the things we love. So my mind tells me two things: either stay back and try to love where you are, or run away to that which makes you truly happy. After all, it's your life—not your lover's or your family's. And then I go numb. The selfless version of me who's now made room for a version that believes in self-love is lost. I am so lost. Whoever said that adulthood is better than adolescence knows nothing. Your twenties are as complicated and confusing as your teens. My friends and I talk about this every day. No, it never gets easier; you just learn to cope better. Even if you don't learn to cope better, you begin complaining less and panicking less; you just deal with sh*t and move on to the next challenge that awaits you. All our loved ones have done that, and we are doing that too. That's how life works.

    Amidst all that chaos, if you manage to find your hiraeth on a random Saturday morning, as I did, appreciate the realization and make room for it without disrupting the rhythm of your present. Life is lived in the little pleasures and small breaks. A lifelong vacation is no vacation; the key to everything beautiful is balance. It took me some time to realize it, but I finally saw it, and I am working on accepting it every day. Guwahati isn't my hiraeth; it never will be, but it could be the place that allows me to breathe freely whenever I choose to visit my hiraeth. So, let's bloom where we are planted and reach for the stars! Let's embrace change as it embraces us. Fernweh or hiraeth, willingly or unwillingly, one must make room for reality whenever it knocks on your door. It's at my door now, so I must leave now. Thank you for being patient readers. Have a lovely weekend!

In the name of adulting

Image Source: SnapwireSnaps

    If you ask me, change doesn't feel good—never has, never will. But change has always been a welcome guest. It's been a week since I shifted base, and I am still struggling to mentally accept this HUGE change that has somehow affected every single aspect of my life. For the first time, I'm without friends in a city; for the first time, I am living alone in a huge house; and there are so many other things I've done for the first time in the last week. Yet, for the first time, I don't feel like continuing. The idea of change has never failed to excite me; however, this time, it feels like the bulb of my life has suddenly become dimmer; like I've come from the summer of my life to a premature decay. A part of me screams every morning, asking me to leave everything and run away—run away to all that I love, all that now lives and breathes in different parts of the country. And then there is the other part, the sensible one, that tells me to shut up and go on with the day.

    Humidity is a killer of productivity. Summers are unbearable in Hyderabad. I've had days when nothing I'd do would help me breathe peacefully in Hyderabad's heat. But things somehow feel worse in Assam's heat, mainly because of the humidity in our air. The constant sweating and heaviness of the air make one irritable and unwilling to give one's best in whatever they are engaged in. This has been a common complaint from residents in our part of the country. Living away from this place for the last 5–6 summers somehow took away this irritable summer memory from me. When I sat on that flight from Bangalore to Guwahati a week ago, I didn't expect it to be this hot and humid. On the contrary, I was expecting showers. But here we are, travelling in the crowded city bus for 3–4 hours every day in the unbearable Guwahati heat.

    There's more than just the weather, my separation from my loved ones, or my unsatisfying solitude that have made embracing this city and this change difficult for me, but I am not ready to talk about it. Perhaps I am ready mentally, but I am still struggling to find the right words and approach to express such a thing on a blogging forum. That's a task for another day when I am in a better place, but right now, all I feel is a terrible void of trying to survive in a city with known unknowns, possessed have-nots, and all things paradoxical. I am hoping for things to turn in my favour, not just for now but on a long-term basis. I know it isn't too much to expect from one's life; it's just that we are a generation of overthinkers. Right now, there is this dilemma of whether to embrace things as they are or keep manifesting that faint ray of hope that has the potential of reuniting me with all that I deeply adore. And what's at stake, you ask? Well, it's my heart on one hand and my happiness on the other. Lucky are those whose hearts and happiness lie in the same place. For the rest of us, it's plain sacrifice and compromise in the name of adulting.

Of new cities

I took a big step by deciding to leave the metropolitan life that I'm so fond of, and coming to my home state - to a place with less avenues, yet people with a more helpful nature. Like any other place, there are plus and minus points of being in Guwahati that the last 24 hours of mentally accepting to be a part of this city has brought to my notice. I'll start with the positives:

• The city is sweet. Because I know the local language, and have so many relatives in the city, there's always security and assurance that I won't get lost anywhere or that people won't exploit me. Everything safe is just a dial away.
• There's Uber and Ola, so if you wanna skip the city bus traffic and discomfort, there's that luxury for just an extended budget.
• Home is an overnight journey away so I know that I can keep going and checking in on the old folks any time I want or any time there is a need.
• The food options here are quite nice and in line with the eastern palette. No more craving for juicy momos and settling for rubbery, overpriced ones; or yearning for Chicken thali and Kaji Nemu and making do with average food and the regular chota nimbu. Food in restaurants is, by and large, cheaper than the bigger cities which again is a BIG plus point, especially for students.
• Things are comparatively cheaper if you know how to live. If you chose to travel by city bus, eat basic homely food, spend less on posh stuff, then this is the perfect place to save money. Although all these apply to any place, this statement is keeping in mind the price difference.

Now coming to the downside which I now see and hope to overcome in the near future:

• I don't own a place here. So I gotta rent a place and that is not an easy thing to do especially in the absence of apps like NoBroker that let you set your requirements and look for a place accordingly.
• If you don't know how to ride a car or scooty, or if you don't own a personal vehicle then daily commute has the probability of soaking up all your productive energy (no metros or local trains here, just the city buses, e-rickshaws or Tata Magics). But yeah, good music on earphones helps. I also feel, carrying a book for a light read, or having meaningful podcasts on your earphones could be a nice way to utilise the commute time. Ofcourse the ultimate time-killer - talking to your parents, siblings, friends, or partners on phone tops this list!
• You can't say KELA out loud like you would in other cities of the country and world without being judged for randomly and loudly uttering the official swear word of the state, and that too being a lady! So yeah, no fun like that. Also, since most of the people you interact with are probably gonna be L1 Assamese speakers, there's no excitement of teaching KELA and other curse words to non-Assamese speakers ( a delight I thoroughly enjoyed during my time at Bangalore and Hyderabad). But this isn't really a downside, this point is really just for me!
• People are judgemental and narrow-minded to a great extent. Although Guwahati is the biggest, most populous and most developed city of the state, our people are yet to evolve out of their gossipy and judgemental mentality. This is not a generalisation but the reality of the vast majority. Perhaps by the time our generation becomes the oldies in town, things will get better, cause my generation and the ones after and just years before us are pretty open-minded, accepting and chill. I make this comment after having enjoyed and admired the anonymity that city life brings!

And a few general downsides include pollution, and traffic. However, I'm here for at least 5 years and if destiny makes it happen, then perhaps for even longer. So I think it's in my best interest to try and see the good in this city that I'll now call 'home.' Guwahati has always been a vacation destination for me. I've only come here on my summer and winter vacations to spend time with the paternal side of the family.

Growing up, I visited Guwahati multiple times but my visits were limited to home visits or prolonged stays at my Uncle's house in Beltola. As a college kid, Guwahati became the transit hub - I would come to Khanapara or ISBT to board my buses to Duliajan. Guwahati was the midway where I would change vehicles from Shillong to my hometown, and so, exploring Guwahati wasn't that readily available an option. There were a few times when I visited this city to hang out with my friends (this was during UG), but even then I was a pillion rider, an uber-dependent and ignorant traveller, or simply a guest who was taken care of by the others. I never felt the need to be on my own ever in this city. There has always been someone or the other to show the way or hold my hand.

Through my travels through life and places, I've learned that attachment to a place is strongest when you know the place well and can confidently travel alone in it. This hasn't been the case for me in Guwahati so far and perhaps that's why the city hasn't grown on me in the last two decades. But I think beginning my PhD here would serve as the ideal space for me to acquaint myself with the ways of this city. Guwahati is the Mahanagri that so many of my friends are genuinely fond of. It's the city that witnessed my father's glorious youth. I think it's fate that I'm here alone and in my twenties, walking the same streets that my father had once walked on as a guy in his twenties! A guy from a lower-middle class family in Nazira once stepped into this city with eyes full of dreams, and he left with so much! Today, here's his youngest child struggling to fulfill similar dreams! Life has come full circle. The question now is, will there be a mutual acceptance between me and the city?

The answer will probably be here in this page, some years down the lane, in the form of my memories and yearnings. But the hope that these memories will be those of fondness, growth and mirth is strongest now than ever before. It's 6:30 in the evening now, I'm sitting at this cafe called Quick Pick in Silpukhuri (entered to enjoy the AC vibe and ended up having a delectable Chicken Roll and Masala Cola), I spent 3 hours in the city bus going and coming from the University today. Room hunting on foot is no piece of cake. I'm exhausted but happy that the first day alone in the city hasn't been so bad after all! Here's to new chapters in old places....to adulting and struggling for the cause of the bigger picture! Here's to beginning life as a research scholar!

The magnificent and the mundane

    Sometimes I wonder if I'm living a lie. Sometimes my life seems too good to be true. You know, those moments when you're on a car ride with those you hold close: there's the beautiful scenery outside, a chilling breeze adding layers to your hair, there's carefree laughter, a sense of belongingness, a sense of joy, contentment, peace and everything else that completes the idea of perfection and bliss. And then there are times when life seems a lie because of all the unwanted solitude, the self-imposed exile, the disturbing thoughts, the weight kept on your chest to relieve loved ones from the pain your words might inflict on them, the weight of carrying unrevealable secrets and sins, the self-loathe driven by under-achievement and exceeding expectations from the self and others...and just plain, painful existence. Both scenarios make life seem like a lie and I don't know why but in recollection, the two emotions feel the same. Like, the good days and the bad days merge to become this memory that life is...it's so simple that I find this explanation futile yet much needed for my emotional release. 

    There's so much more I can add to this, and maybe I will today. Why leave everything to be understood or implied? Sometimes it's good to address and acknowledge the obvious. If not for the world, then at least for the self...not doing so, in my opinion, eventually fades out the thin line between the 'magnificent' and the 'mundane'. So, I'll attempt to track my magnificent and mundane moments today, so that, I know that my existence isn't futile, no matter what the inner insecurities make me believe.

    I'm sitting in a park, surrounded by strangers of all age groups and presumably, different social classes. There's the old couple that's lived life, gained perspective, done their duties and is now out for a walk. There's the middle-aged couple that probably has lived a middle-class life providing for the family and is now struggling with the growing ailments of middle age, and hence has incorporated an evening walk into their schedule. There are countless kids at the play area with their boisterous chattering and antics, the bachelors running hard to let go of academic and/or professional baggage. The teenagers on the phone with their lovers can't be missed either. And then amidst all this stereotypical and subconscious story-formation in the head, while brisk walking to release my own mental blockage, there's the accidental eye contact with a sweet-looking elderly, the innocent smile of a toddler being held from both sides by either parent, the pleasurable checking-out of a good looking stranger and the excitement of treating myself with coconut water after finishing the much needed 10k steps of the day. This mundane seems magnificent right now and I'm sure it will continue to feel the same if and when I come back to this post later.

    The magnificent for me, also includes the kindness I receive every day, the help I get without asking for it, and the compassion extended my way when there's little hope of even being understood. Friends who go the extra mile to make you reach your destination, people who let you inhabit their private spaces and make you feel welcome, so that you may experience that which was probably never accessible to them, lovers who overlook your flaws and make you feel loved despite it all, parents who seldom show affection but manage to get print-outs of you posting about your achievements online, despite their technological inexperience and barriers. I wish I had better memory and permanent storage in my head to remember the countless moments of love and affection I've received lately, but there's nothing that matches words. Words have always been my truest comrade, not pictures, not videos, just words. And of late, I've learned to appreciate gestures too. So, deeds recollected in words are what I find to be the best means of recording the magnificent and perhaps, of overlooking or letting go of the not-so-magnificent (mundane) memories.

    Coming back to things that make my life seem like a lie in a good way. Talk about funny friends whose comments make you laugh hysterically and forget all your woes. Or a home-cooked meal prepared with love, a long hug where you can feel the other person's heart pump, an eagerly awaited text from a loved one, appreciation from a mentor, expressing gratitude for the kindness received, taking the high road and keeping your cool when all you want to do is be as sarcastic, insensitive or mean as the other person...basically, all things that sustain relationships and help them thrive. There's more but I feel content and must stop now. As perfect as the picture of the park I described above is, it is not without mosquitoes, so I must leave now.

Here's to living life despite the moments when it doesn't feel worth living. Here's to cherishing the good, embracing the bad and finding a way to redefine the ugly. Here's to the magnificent in the mundane!

Let's rant, shall we?

 

I have always tried to make this blog a space where the lighter side of life steals the limelight. But an occasional variation doesn't do much harm, does it? I don't have a positive highlight for this post... it's just me blabbering yet again. Happy reading!

I am told that writing is my strength and that I should write often. But nobody tells me how? How do I write on days when I can't even feel things I desperately want to feel? How can I be creative on days when even doing the basic chores feels like a task?

I am blessed to be living on a central university campus where I get to interact with people my age from the entire country on a daily basis. My conversations with some of these people have made one thing clear: mental well-being is one of the most important issues the world needs to address today irrespective of gender, age, profession and other classifiers. I feel that along with driving, swimming, financial planning and sex education lessons, psychology should also be one of the life-skill-enhancing subjects taught in our school curriculum. That way, we're at least preparing people for real-world challenges!

It's mind-boggling to realise that human reactions to everyday problems are largely triggered by their past experiences, heartbreaks, traumas, setbacks and pain. Everyone is healing. Everyone is scarred. From a five-year-old kid to a ninety-year-old elderly....nobody here is writing on a clean slate. We deal with broken colours, faded prints, unclean boards and consequent moods around us. So while we must be kind to one another, we should also acknowledge the fact that we too are human and might come out as rude, insensitive, unkind or mean at times and while that may be unintentional, it's still heartbreaking for the recipient.

I can't go into the details, but lately, I've realised that love is a myth. Love is an obligation, love is a duty, love is a need, love is codependency, love is a habit, love is showing up when all you want to do is run away. I started this blog as a sixteen-year-old girl stuck in tears of unrequited love. Today, as an almost 24-year-old, I realise that the first blog post I wrote here was perhaps the purest form of love I've felt. As you grow older, you realise that love isn't always the romantic image that movies, novels, reels, poems, society or our vanity feeds us. Love is different for different people. Love languages are different and sometimes, in fact, most times, we end up with people who don't share the same language as us. But we don't stop loving them, we just make our peace with the mutual unintelligibility of our love languages. 

Love is routine. Love is boring. Loving is dull but passionate. Love is empty but fulfilling. Love is painful yet the most peaceful emotion you'll ever experience. Love is the poisonous elixir that keeps us running while making us tired of it all. Perfection in love is inexistent. But love itself? It's the perfect oxymoron of all things right and all things wrong.

Having said that, it's also true that not every love story reaches its happy ending. Sometimes, the love we share with one becomes the roadblock to happiness in our relationship with another (childhood trauma coming in the way of our adult relationships is a classic example). Love can become the pinching weight on our fragile hearts that makes us yearn for the 'what ifs' all the while knowing that that picture is never going to be 'complete' or even 'happy' for that matter. This is what happens in modern-day relationships too. We all bring our pasts, and that one ex we regret losing, or perhaps regret never having and that memory comes in the way of our relationship with our current partner. In other cases, it's the expectations of flawlessness and the realisation that 'I don't need to take shit from another.' By now, you must have understood that I've really just come here to rant today. So hear me out some more.

I come across rude, mean and insensitive people and begin to wonder: why is he/she being mean to me when all I've been to them is nice? Anger and bitterness is the first instinctive response to unkind behaviour, but trust me, every person who's gone bitter on the world has had someone close to them spit the seeds of bitterness on their face, or experienced some incident grave enough to impact their core beliefs and behaviour. Grief left unexpressed often manifests as unkindness or coldness to those around. People often don't realise that they are yet to heal from past scars.

So, all this rant on love and pain is just to say the obvious: human actions are always logically explainable and often emotionally charged. At this point, learning the art of forgiving the other and the self seems like the key to a peaceful night's sleep after a day of analysing one's daily actions and reactions! And with that, I lay another burden off my chest, dear reader. I don't know if any of that made sense to you. I'll be honest, I've been cruel lately, rather, fate has been cruel and unfortunately, I'm cursed to live with the repercussions. I'm gradually learning the art of smiling while being stuck somewhere. This piece was really just me getting some writer's respite. Thank you for making it till here!

P.S.: I've recently added the 'Leave a message' field to this blog. So go ahead and text me the things that make you mad, sad, happy, angry or anything today (it comes directly to my mailbox, so no broadcasting happening)! Feel free to drop me a text!