The Single Sock

I sat on the floor of my dressing room, rifling through my sock drawer.

Ah! There are my favourite sea green socks with navy blue patches.
But wait, these aren’t socks! This is a sock. Singular. A loner. The new single left behind whose partner ditched him; a single contact in a case of contacts; the hour hand of a clock whose minute hand fell off.

I bet he sits there wondering where his mate is. Does he look at other happy pairs of socks and wonder if it was his fault? Or did he lose his partner in a tragic washing machine accident?

Does he believe Greek mythology, and think that socks were really made joint, one sock for each sock, till Zeus split them apart? Or does he over think and go into a pessimistic state of mind, thinking sock mates don’t exist and that other socks just found socks that were the most compatible with them?

Does he think that there is no purpose of his life now that he is partner-less? Or will he get a makeover and turn into a Christmas stocking that everyone loves? Will he go on a downward spiral, tear himself and turn into a wipe cloth? Or will he stick googly eyes on himself and turn into a hand puppet?

*Sigh*. “My poor single sock”, I think, before smacking myself on the head and realising he thinks none of these things since
a) I love this sock – he is not alone, and
b) This is a sock – it can’t think anything!

Two views of our World

** This, again, is something I found in my archive, and have decided to post without editing. I wrote this as a senior in high school, about 4 years ago now, and I find that most wonders and fears mentioned here still ring true, even though a lot of it is hyperbole for effect **

There Has Never Been a Better Time to be Alive

As I sat on the balcony of my apartment on the fifteenth floor of my building, looking at kids gleefully playing, giddy with laughter in the muddy playground below, and an airplane whooshing past the clouds, leaving its own white fog behind, above, I realized – There has never been a better time to be alive!

Mankind is growing faster than a rabbit finishing a race. There is a new kind of technology in the market every other day! At this rate, I am sure we will cure cancer and HIV AIDS really soon. The completion of any task is now just the snap of our fingers away.

We have seen wars and we have seen terrible times. We have learnt from our mistakes and we have built amazing new lives. We have reached Mars and we have walked on the Moon. We have reached the North and South poles and we have survived the “Rise of the Internet”. We have discovered Nuclear power and we have discovered solar systems millions of light years away. We have discovered a cure for almost every disease known to man and we can cross the seven oceans within a single day by air.

We have not yet been invaded by aliens and we have not yet seen World War III. We have not yet died of thirst and we have not yet met a species more intelligent than us.

Furthermore, we live in an amazing era. We can go anywhere on a whim – get on ships, and get on hot air balloons. We can jump from a glider plane in the sky with a single parachute, joyfully experience ‘zero gravity’ and the exhilaration of falling – falling for miles and miles and not dying. We can get on roller coasters. Go up and down, round and round and still land on our feet, ready for another go. It is a wonderful time to be alive and I highly doubt I’d be as happy in any other century, so I suggest people cherish it till the very end.

It is a Terrifying Time to be Young

Yet, it is a terrifying time to be young.
People tell me I am foolish for believing so and that I should be grateful for all that I have in life. “Your ancestors didn’t have any of it!”, they exclaim. What I don’t understand is how they can make this claim with such sympathy and reassurance. Our ancestors were so lucky! They didn’t have to deal with society and all its shortcomings. They didn’t have to deal with all the majorly ridiculous stereotypes about how kids shouldn’t do “what they shouldn’t do” and how women shouldn’t be “the way they shouldn’t be”. I admire my ancestors who, over three thousand years ago, only cared about surviving, feasting and enjoying life. Who didn’t have to worry about reputation, about the future or about conservation – conservation of resources, humanity or integrity.

Unlike us, they didn’t have to worry about terrorist attacks, and they didn’t have to worry about nuclear bombs. They didn’t have to worry about grades, resumes, school or jobs and they didn’t have to worry about money. They didn’t have to worry about a woman being out ‘alone’ in the dark (well, at least not because she was a woman) and they didn’t have to worry about accidental murders by greedy robbers. They lived happy, cavemen lives which, even though, were sometimes short because the several uncured diseases and dangers in the wild, they were at least blissful and stress-free.

Simultaneously, I am also jealous of what the future generations will get to see – True Equality in every sense of the phrase. There will be no minority communities (like the LGBT community) because what people want in their lives, how they want it and who they want it with will only be their own business, and not the rest of the worlds. There would be no stereotypes and no generalizations because people will have long gotten over them. There will be diversity, but not really, for all human beings will really be just the same. There will be exposure to new life choices and intergalactic species because that is the next step forward. There will be zero discrimination and zero conservation. That would be an amazing world to live in.

But for now, the world is just terrible and the fact that I can’t have any of what the future holds or what the past held is simply depressing. I have to live without what I wish to see and experience for another sixty years until I eventually pass away unsatisfied. Instead, I will get exactly what I don’t want – stress, restriction and fear.

It is really a terrible and terrifying time to be young and alive. Unfortunately, it is a burden I have to bear

Rise Up

** This is an unmodified poem I found in my archive from before I made this blog. It’s a bit cheesy, but it’s from the time in my teenage years when I had finally started growing into myself **

I was like fire, glowing like the flaming sun,
I was burning, burning till I was all done.
Trying, pleasing, faking my merry way through life, yeah.
I got tired, it got old,
As I got dragged down, flipped around and sent back alone in my hole.

And I realised, there was no point in acting the way I’m not,
No point in living as someone not myself,
And I realised, life went on,
It didn’t matter how tough my problems were,
It didn’t matter if I miserably failed at pleasing others.
For I will rise, high like the sun and stars in the sky above.

And I realised, it didn’t matter if I couldn’t always give people what they wanted.
And I realised, all that mattered was if I could satisfy myself.
It wasn’t over, my passion was yet unleashed,
I could go on, revealing my true self that no one had ever seen before.

I will rise again, come out of my hole,
Take the world by storm, let dumbfounded people ogle.
Live my life truly as if it were truly my own.
I will not let others dim my brightness,
Or throw water on my fuel anymore.

I was like fire burning out, but I will rise up again,
As high as the sun and the stars above,
Let my might sweep the world over.
I will let my golden soul, the soul of a lion, roar.
I will be like a new sun,
Burning brighter than ever,
This time, all of my own accord.

One Morning…

One morning I woke up
After the sun was out.
Kids on Earth were hungry;
Farmers had been killed by the drought.

Though, I had green paper;
I could do what I want.
I bathed in a tub of bath salts,
In lavishness I was a savant.

I was blinded by privilege;
Had a great inheritance.
I thought I deserved what I had;
My life was magnificent.

One morning I woke up
After the sun was out.
I was one of the hungry kids;
My money had run out.

I had no more green paper,
Life’s barriers emerged.
Troubles were galore.
I was submerged.

The privilege I took for granted
Had deserted me after all.
Should I take the noose?
It was now my call.

One morning I didn’t wake up
But the sun was still out.
My legacy was defunct;
Killed by the green drought.

The Lone Wolf

This is a spur of the moment poem I wrote, Trying to Identify with a Rape victim in India. Maybe it’s because of all the recent talk about the documentary, “India’s Daughter”, but this is what was on my mind. These aren’t my thoughts on rape, but just my interpretation of a rape victim’s situation in my country.

The Lone Wolf

She lurks in the dark now,
Afraid and ashamed to be seen.
No more is she who she once was,
Who she once used to be.

There’s a black hole in her heart,
Where there once was light.
She used to keep her head held high,
Now she cringes on meeting anyone’s eye.

She was told she was precious,
She deserved to be cherished.
But as soon as he touched her,
Her worth became less than a weed’s.

Her soul feels dead to her,
Her body is still raw.
The world disowned her,
Now she sleeps on a bed of straw.

Her life feels pointless now,
She has no one to share it with.
She is forever tarnished,
She doesn’t know how much longer she can bear it now.

It all started in the dark,
When she tried to be brave.
She was trying to live a human life,
When he reminded her she wasn’t human,
She only ever was and will be a woman.

She didn’t want any of it,
But the world only blamed her,
They said she asked for it,
When she crossed the Lakshman Rekha.
She tried to face the dark,
Now, she has to die in it.

Endings

I sit here staring at nothing in particular,
Trying to decipher the purpose of my life,
Not sure what matters.
After all, everything ends.
We live to die,
We love to lose,
After all, everything ends.. someday.

But the anticipation of the end is what kick starts the beginning,
The way a cancer patient only really starts living
when he thinks every day, “Today might be my last”
Everything that begins has to end someday,
But maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Detachment overcomes me,
Pleasure is a foreign sensation,
Being close to someone is ancient history,
Life goes on, busy.

What really matters?
I’m still wondering.
Butterflies haven’t fluttered in my stomach for a while.
Maybe it’s a sign,
Maybe they are lost and will never be found again.

Emotions seem petty,
Caring is unnecessary,
Humanity slips away slowly.
Everything needs to be rational now;
My brain handles everything,
The heart stopped working long ago.

Maybe that’s just life,
A process where sanity and clarity steadily decline.
Nothing lasts forever.
After all, everything ends,
Why should emotions be any different?

Everything ends, just like it should.
And maybe that’s not a bad thing.
A new chapter can only start when the previous one is over.
After all, everything ends
But maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Hypocrisy at its Saddest

Women can be such hypocrites sometimes. There, I said it. We claim we want men who like us for our brains and not our bodies. We claim we want society to see us as people and not objects for men to own. We want to be accomplished human beings and not trophy wives. Now, it’s true that we want all this, but how can we expect others to see us as people when we can’t do so ourselves?

After all the fighting, all the stands we have taken against sexism, we still see ourselves as objects. We want to be pretty objects with zero figures, flawless skin, mascara-ed eyes, and painted lips and faces. We starve ourselves to achieve the first and spend lots and lots of money on possibly very harmful chemicals to achieve the rest. Is that seriously all we are still about?  There’s nothing wrong with wanting to look good – it increases our self confidence. We don’t want to look like savages or wild animals who just got out of the woods, and that’s understandable. But obsessively spending hours in front of the mirror cursing ourselves for every little flaw, every part of our skin that hangs, every pimple, every imperfect nail and puking to lose weight while men don’t worry about such superficial things and actually use their time productively – is it all worth the self hate, pity, and physical and mental torture?

We want to get ahead in the world. We want to be equal to men. Heck, we ARE their equals. Nevertheless, we hesitate in acting like it. We let them be imperfect, say boys will be boys and let them flaunt their flaws. We don’t judge them for every little imperfection in their appearance or see them count every carb they ingest. Let’s be fair. Let’s treat ourselves the same way. We’re better than objects, let’s not confine ourselves to their physical limits. Let’s be more. Let’s be ABOUT more. More than our body; More than our skin; More than our painted faces and More than our weight. Let’s be Humans, and not just perfect looking shells of them with corrupt bodies and tortured souls.