It has become my new habit to go on a peaceful walk after having breakfast, feeling the morning breeze gently cuddling my face and playing with my hair. Somedays I would come across a servant maid aunt who worked in the PG I used to stay until few years back. She recognizes me after all these years and asks me with concern how I am doing and whether I am eating properly these days. She speaks only Hindi. My hindi skills are limited to "Ek gau mein ek kisan raghu thatha" & "Hindi thoda thoda aatha hai". We still manage to communicate with each other with face reactions and tiny tiny words. She would ask about my friends as well and how they are doing in life. And her elder daughter recently delivered a baby and she is a proud Grandmom now. She shared this with so much happiness.
It's been few days. I met her again during my morning walk. She shared with a glint of joy that her younger daughter is getting married by the end of this month. It costed her Eiggggghhhhhhht Thousand Rupees just for purchasing wedding clothes alone. (Yes, you read it right. It's Rs.8,000/-). And there were other expenses too. And then her face was full of sadness that she couldn't travel to West Bengal to be present for her own daughter's wedding. One way tatkal train ticket to her place would cost her around Rs.2,500 - Rs.3,000 for one person. Up and down ticket charges for two people would eaily come down to around Rs.11,000. She asked for advance from the houses where she worked. They all had denied. And she also has to work on getting leave from all the houses she is working for. The sadness in her eyes was real when she shared this with me.
I couldn't even imagine not being part of my own daughter's wedding just because I don't have enough money to book the train tickets and that my employers wouldn't give me a few days' leave to travel.
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There is a street dog along the way I walk. Something about this dog feels close to my heart. He kept circling around the same place again and again. I bought a biscuit packet and spread the biscuits on the ground nearby him. Few biscuits got stuck in the cover and I instinctively said "Iru". The dog listened to me and stepped back. When I spread all the biscuits on the ground and said "Vaa", he came close to me and started eating the biscuits one by one. I walked away happily. Today, I saw two other street dogs fight with him and push him aside for eating those biscuits. They could have peacefully shared the biscuits among themselves and eased out all their hunger. But they unnecessarily pushed this dog aside and fought with him. Later they ran away. They weren't interested in having the biscuits for themselves. It just looked like a display of power that they wanted to establish.
I have observed this similar behaviour in pigeons too when I used to feed them on my balcony. While some pigeons happily eat the grains, drink water, and fly away, some pigeons simply fight with others and shoo them away despite the availability of food.
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A female friend from my workplace called me the other day and spoke for around 2 hours that how much she is frustrated with her dating life. She had tried dating apps, matrimony services and whatnot. Most guys were either already stuck in their past pain and didn't seem interested in long-term relationships while few were outright creepy. She asked me if I have any male friends who are available and whether I can introduce her to them. I laughed out loud.
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A male friend shared with me the other day that he is still heartbroken over his crush from college days, after all these years. As she had married his own friend, it had made things a little tougher for him. His matrimony searches are not going that great. He was also worried about his balding hair. His parents and younger brother forced him to take hair transplant treatment and he is now suffering from the after-effects of this treatment. It really felt so horrible to handle such pain. Another day when we were discussing what makes a human happy, he just told outright that he had never felt real happiness in his entire life.
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A female friend of mine seemed to have an authentic, fairy tale kind of love story which proceeded to marriage despite strong opposition from both sides' parents. They had a few heat-of-the-moment fights which led to separation and the parents took this as an opportunity and didn't let them reconcile despite the guy's sincere efforts to apologize and make up for his mistakes. Even after their divorce, they continued to be friends and he used to take her out to restaurants and care for her so much. But his parents wanted him to get married to a girl of their choice and thus a beautiful love between two hearts had to end up as just memories. She had been trying to distract herself from this pain with casual relationships. extensive shopping, hectic work, and food. Nothing seemed to save her from her own thoughts.
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Another friend of mine was stuck in a toxic relationship and the guy completely blocked her in all possible mediums of communication. She was so obsessive about him that she used to travel from the city where she worked to the other city where the guy was working. The tricky part is her parents also lived in the city where the guy was working. She used to wait in front of his office the whole day just to meet him once and then return to her city the same night. All this with so much anxiety that her parents or relatives should not see her by any chance.
His marriage got fixed and she wanted to give a guest appearance like 'Nee thaane en ponvasantham' movie. She gave up on the idea and finally moved on. When she got to know that he became a proud dad to a daughter, she couldn't accept the fact that he had moved on so damn easily.
She moved on over time and married a man her parents found for her from a matrimony site. It's just like a typical arranged marriage where the husband and wife take efforts to make it work. No magical fireworks and no huge issues either. She had accepted that this is her life and made peace with it. When making love became a chore on the timetable, all that she is worried about now is making a baby.
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Yet another friend who didn't have prior relationship experience went through a similar struggle with arranged marriage. She is blessed with a lovely, wonderful daughter. But she is afraid of her never-ending work and aggressive manager. She used to lock her daughter inside a room while she worked from home during the day. I scolded her badly for having done this. She isn't happy with her life either.
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There are five more friends with unhappy life experiences in one or the other way. Only the intensity of suffering, story, script, and screenplay are different. Emotions are all the same.
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I used to be this naive girl who happily wore her rose-tinted glasses and looked at the world with awe. But the awful experiences shattered the rose-tinted glasses into tiny pieces. And each shard of this glass has managed to pierce and scratch the inner walls of my heart so damn perfectly. It just bleeds everywhere and I don't even feel the pain anymore. I don't know how to inject any medicine inside.
I'm looking around the world to get a glimpse of hope, someone to show me a living proof that happiness is feasible. But all that I see around me are broken people who turned bitter or aggressive. Either way, they are blindly going ahead with the motions of life in a robotic way.
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If the creator of this universe is listening to me right now, I just have this one confession. "This is not what I signed up for".
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