10 days, 10 feels

I took my annual pilgrimage trip back home. The funny thing is, every time I’m here, it never goes the way I planned it to in my head. As much as I’d wanted to go out and explore my own city, which seems to recede from my memory, I also don’t feel like getting out once I’m here. 

However, this time around, I did manage to do as much as I could, whether it was exploring the city or myself in it.

Day 1

I’m habituated to making thick milkshakes that keep me full until midday, and I didn’t want to stop just cause I was here. But as much as I wanted to keep up with my banana-oat-peanut butter with soy milk habit, I found myself veering off of it 3-4 days later. I made some of it for my brother, though, and he seemed to like it. 

[Update: I visited home 8 months later to find this has become a thing now. I’m so proud]

When I’m home, I tend to ingest more dairy than I usually do. How the fuck can I say no to my mother’s shahi paneer or paneer bhurji or masala chai? And it doesn’t stop there. Puris were my all-time favourites as a kid, but as an adult, I don’t want to explain to my mother how my sensitive-ass skin works. So I thought, I will avoid milk tea to balance the rest of it. To keep myself off of milk, I made lemon and honey tea for my brother and my mum the first evening I was home. A few days later, my mum was making a kickass version of it for us. 

How do moms do that? Turn everything they touch into absolute perfection? 

Later that day, I sat with my father as he made himself a whiskey peg. I ask him to make me one, and he does. I hate the taste and flee. Would 8/10 do it again.

Day 2

I wanted to learn to drive, so my brother and I went to the driving school where he learned to drive, and I got myself admitted. Thinking my father would pay for it, I had discussed it with him beforehand, but when it came to the payment, my father pulled a classic Ajju and shoved the fee up my account. I feel betrayed.

A butterfly sits in my mum’s money plant and refuses to leave. My brother thinks it's injured. We leave it alone, and in the evening, it’s still there.

My mum and I ordered some small side tables and wallpaper for the house. It’s pretty cool. 

Day 3

First day working from my hometown. I go in full throttle because it’s gonna be a busy week. I also want to finish as much as I can so I can go explore during the evening.

And explore I do. My brother and I get Hoegaarden on our way to the alcohol store where I buy a rosé, a sparkling wine, a Kahlua, and a Japanese gin [my first]. I almost feel bad for spending an entire rent on it, but then balance it out with “it's ok if I do it once a year”, which is not an exaggeration.

I’m reading “The Women of Brewster Place”. I see glimpses of Mattie, a woman who leaves her Tennessee home because she gets pregnant and refuses to tell her dad who the father is [it’s someone the father hates]. A stranger [Miss Eva] takes to her kindly, invites Mattie to stay with her, and eventually dies. With all the rent money Miss Eva asks her to set aside, Mattie buys the house after Miss Eva dies. When her spoiled, ungrateful son Basil gets into a fight and they have to take mortgage on the house to cover his bail, Mattie is forced to move to Brewster Place after Basil fails to show up for his trial. I get to know her friend Etta, who’s come to live with her after a somewhat successful stint as a bar singer. Looking for a change from her constantly-in-turmoil relationships with men, she moves in with Mattie for the stability she begins to feel the need for.

My mum takes me to the bank so I can complete my Know Your Customer formalities, and I can get my phone number changed.

A little backstory: Since I upgraded to my first iPhone, which only carries one SIM card, I tend to forget to recharge my other number. The scrupulous assholes that telecom giants are, they reassigned my number to a dude named Sikandar. For the longest time, people who didn’t have my calling number would call me on my WhatsApp number and be greeted/told off by Sikandar’s wife. I yeeted the number, but it was still attached to my bank account. We got that done!

I also realised that everyone knows everyone here. My brother with the driving school instructor, my mother with the bank employees. What usually takes a good half-hour took us barely 15 minutes. 

Day 4

Not gonna lie. I started to slack off today. Ended up bingeing the first three episodes of Only Murders in the Building, and man, I really wish that one day I can write something as thrilling as OMIT-B, as heartwarming as Ted Lasso, and as real as Mr Robot. 

One day. 

I continue to read about Kiswana Browne from Brewster Place, a lady trying to reclaim her African-ness by involving herself in protests, moving to a part of town with “her people”. She lacquers up her barely-afro hairdo, refusing to put a telephone in her apartment in Brewster, and genuinely wants to help the people in the building. 

I also read about Lucielia, a woman with a good-for-nothing husband who is reeling from the loss of her infant baby. Lucielia is also the granddaughter of the kind-hearted Ms Eva, the woman who gives Mattie refuge in her home when she first comes to the city with her [bastard] son Basil. So in short, Mattie is kind of a mother figure to Lucielia.

I meet Cora Lee, who was fascinated with baby dolls as a kid and as an adult, can’t seem to stop popping kids off of herself. When the readers are introduced to her, Kiswana is visiting her flat to drop off one of her six/seven kids, who she found eating food out of a garbage bin. Their house is in shambles, the kids are wearing dirty, torn clothes, and all Cora wants to do is tune them out with her soap operas.

Driving is scary. I keep forgetting to use the clutch, I’m too frightened by the people honking behind me, and my driving instructor barely says a word. I can’t tell him, “dude, I’m an introvert, someone needs to break this iceberg! I can’t function or learn unless I know who you are?” Unfortunately, wishful thinking can only get you so far. 

Day 5

Driving has started to agree with me. I learn to drive in first and second gears, and am beginning to use the clutch more naturally. I’m also learning to tune out the incessant honking. What I’m struggling with now is the constant flow of thoughts that never seem to hit a red light. So while I’m trying to take in everything my instructor has to say, I’m also worrying about finishing work, and trying to be at peace with the weird feeling I get every time I’m home. It’s a very “out of place in your own hometown” thing that I can’t quite describe, and wonder if I’ll ever get used to. 

I speak to my friend Darlene after a while. While I’m trotting on the terrace talking to him, I’ve walked 2000 steps. I tell him how I hate eating late and therefore having to stay up late because of a late dinner. I tell him how my boss has been acting weird lately, and how I feel that I might not be able to stick to this job for long. He tells me how he went home after some work at the court and rolled himself a J before going back to work, how he spends his weekends at his current favourite cafe, and how he can't find anyone to go to the Peter Cat Recording Co. concert with. 

I really like speaking to him. I feel like I sometimes need people who can let me give monologues when I have nothing going on at the surface. It gives me profound validation - something I don’t feel I get enough of, for reasons I can’t explain.

Work is almost on track. Mum has been stuffing me with food 3 times a day. I find myself burping until 2 AM. I hate the lack of physical movement I have here. 

I finish reading the Women of Brewster Place. Before it ends, the readers are introduced to Lorraine & Theresa, a gay couple whom some ofthe  Brewster residents begin to resent, despite their good-natured demeanour. 

Spoiler: it gets too real. Lorraine gets brutally raped, and it puts me in a weird headspace for a while. It’s so easy to take a whole human being and reduce them to means, and I can’t wrap my head around how this is a never-ending saga of reality that only adds to my distrust and discomfort around strangers. 

I carry a pepper spray with me everywhere I go now. I imagine getting cornered or overpowered and using the spray on myself so nobody would dare touch me. 

Is it weird that my brain keeps mentally prepping me if I ever find myself in a situation like that? 

Every time I read about a woman getting assaulted, I find myself trying to feel how helpless she must’ve felt. Nobody’s family or values ever prepare her for this. Why? We teach our sisters and daughters to cook, but not to fight back? Our elders are deluded enough to think no harm will come to their sisters and daughters, but not vigilant enough to teach their sons and brothers to be kind, respectful, or empathetic. Great going, patriarchy. Where does one draw the line between fighting back and giving up? Why do men feel the need to violate the sanctity of another whole human being, with dreams, aspirations, and goals? Is there no way to cure the mental illness that prods so many men to turn to the most disgusting thing they can ever do, and not even once think of their mothers and daughters? That was the reality spiral that the ending of The Women of Brewster Place put me into. 

Day 6

Work is almost done, but this just gives me more reasons to slack off. I watch this incredible movie Trap by M. Night Shyamalan. I go into it without any teaser/trailer info, and holy shit, I’m thrown back into why I ever stopped researching serial killers [to write a story, of course]

Long story short, if you wanna watch a dad take his daughter to a concert to realise that you’re stuck because the police planned the concert to catch a serial killer, and you like Shyamalanian twists like yo girl, GO WATCH TRAP!

I speak to a school friend after almost 3 years. When asked about life updates, he tells me that he’s now an orphan, lives in Delhi, and is comfortably settled into a software/coding job. He tells me that the last time we spoke, I was dating a dude 15 years my senior, and I tell him how one day he made me feel shitty about my taste in music [bro stomped all over my Weeknd at the Super Bowl Halftime show excitement], I wrote him a letter breaking up with him, and a day later [before the letter reached him], he texted saying he needed a break from me. 2 Days later when we still hadn’t talked, he read the letter and thanked me for writing honestly. I thought that was the end of it, until the dude showed up at my doorstep 2 months later while I was home alone. Not just that, 2 years after our breakup, bro showed up at my workplace to give me a letter that I explicitly made known that I didn’t want. I told my friend how I took the 140-150 page letter, glued it together with Fevicol and water, and painted over it to make a wall collage. 

And once again, while launching into a monologue, I felt seen and heard, and it put me on cloud nine. And I realised how much I hate being interrupted, and how that’s a non-negotiable for me to stay sane and not doubt myself.

Sorry. I’m keeping things from you. The reason that people letting me talk is such a huge deal to me suddenly is because of something that happened earlier this month. Long story short, I was hosting a close friend’s birthday party, with 2 really close friends and 2 of the birthday person’s friends. At one point during the night, when everyone had their alcohol glasses, one of my close friends led a cheer with the other 3 people. All this while I was sitting right beside them, in the same small, cramped room. It felt like someone gutted my insides because when we planned to throw the surprise party, the last thing I thought would happen was my own friends making me feel sidelined, in my own house. 

Sometimes when I’m sitting by myself, my brain, again, would replay that scene in my head where I’m sitting on the bean bag with my drink in one hand while I set the music in the room to hear my friend go “Cheers!” and everyone following. By the time I turned to look, or even try joining them, the moment had already passed, and I sat frozen in my seat, unable to comprehend the what and why the fuck of the situation. 

After that happened, I tried to unpack it first by myself and then in therapy about why, after going above and beyond for everyone in that room, nobody - none of the four people in the room with me realised that I wasn’t there to cheer with them. Why did nobody wait for me to catch up, or stand up and give me a moment to clink my glass with them?  

Every time the same friends interrupt me even minutely when I’m speaking, it takes me back to that night, and I’m unable to free myself from the clutches of the thought whether I’ve become a pushover. I don’t want to be feeling sidelined around the people closest to me, man. Even today, I read an Instagram post that said, “Did it hurt? When you began talking and realised nobody was listening?” And a person in the comment goes, “That’s the moment I became an observer”

Man. I don't fucking want to be an observer when I’m around my friends. Okay? I DON’T deserve to be talked over or feel sidelined in my own space. I deserve better.

Day 7

Last workday of the week, and I’m already prepping myself to transition back into my main character energy - one who takes people 2-3 years her junior as they are - fools who don’t know better, not letting them define who she is, not letting anyone into her sacred energy, sharing it with only those who honour her inner goddess, love listening to her stories and rants, and show from behaviour that they’d not have her behave any different that who she is in her element. One who dances and prances when she wants, stretches in the morning, eats homecooked food, talks to her plants, does her skincare religiously and makes it a habit to take time out for her first love - writing & reading instead of putting up with immature fools who make her feel less with things that always seem to happen in the spur of the moment. 

My mum takes me to the eye doctor because my eyes have had it with me. All the screentime watching movies and consuming so much content, I have a +.50 in my left eye now. Again, because she knows the right people, we’re in and out of the hospital in 20-25 minutes, cutting through the queues. I feel lucky.

They assigned a different instructor to me today at driving school. I have suddenly gone from no speeding in neighbourhood lanes, driving in gears 1&2, and learning to control the clutch to driving on flyovers, using the accelerator, and learning to stop in traffic, all in 30 minutes. I realised my armpits have taken the entire brunt of my anxiety. But you know what? It feels fucking great. 

I get a massive headache owing to the high-wattage blinding bulb in my room, courtesy of my sister. I ask my brother if he has a cigarette I could share. We sit in a blind spot [away from cameras], and he tells me about when he first started smoking [the girl he liked was a smoker]. We talk for a bit, and it feels… different. A good different.

Day 8

My good feelings about smoking with my brother are short-lived. He goes to a dermatologist to get some pimples looked at, and the doctor tells him he has herpes. I rush to Google to ask whether I can get it from sharing a cigarette, and the internet isn’t kind to me. I panic for a solid 5 minutes, and then realise it's probably too late to do anything about it.

While he’s driving me to the salon where I’m gonna get my hair bleached, he tells me he knows where he got it from. He said he kissed a girl who had it [not sure the extent of truth here]. He’s either on a zero level with hygiene or [more plausibly] just thinks with his dick.

I later go to a salon to get my hair bleached. I don’t know if it's my PMS brain or the prolonged suffering of having to sit and wait for my hair to lighten, but I wonder if I’m making a mistake putting my money into this. What was supposed to be done in 3 hours turned into a Greek torture rack when I had to stay at the salon until 11 PM, excruciatingly having the salon staff wait on me beyond their usual work hours. My hair lightens, but the ash blonde I want is still a distant dream. I feel really valued and, after a while, realise that I like the blonde in my hair. I’m already thinking of turning them into purple-silver once I go back to Ahmedabad. 

It’s a tiring day, and I finish dinner at 11:50 PM. Needless to say, I’m still energetic at 2:30 after having finished watching Silent Night with my brother. So I go watch Night Swim, a supposed horror movie. 

Short recaps: Silent Night is an apocalyptic fic where a mysterious weather condition is killing people [according to the government]. To help the people cope, the government has given them an ‘exit pill’ they can take to avoid dying from excruciating pain. Themes of the movie include the effects of fear-mongering and misinformation, all made better by well-written characters, also giving you another reason not to trust your government.

Night Swim shows a professional baseball player having to retire owing to multiple sclerosis. His family now has to move houses owing to this new life they have, and they find a house with a pool. Thinking it’ll be good for physical therapy for the player, they take it, only to realise there’s something wrong with the pool. 

When I say it’s supposedly a horror movie, I don’t mean that in a shady sense of the way, by the way. I feel it’s more mythology-based, and I dare say that’s the strongest part of this movie’s plot. However, when it comes to the horror bits, it’s very disgusting, water-themed like The Ring, but doesn’t do much with the mythology-plot potential. That being said, I do like it, and I would recommend it to those who avoid watching horror. All in all, the movie has many enjoyable bits, but it does make my hate for the swimming pool stronger [I can’t swim. Yes, that’s a nod to one of my favourite vines.

I find myself wanting to listen to ‘One of the Girls’, a song from The Idol. In my head, I’m trying to choreograph the song and want to try dancing to it in my heels once I go back to AMD. I also realise how the Weeknd loves singing about softcore porn sex with spitting and choking, but it fell flat when he actually went and did it in the show…driving me to the conclusion that he prolly another whore in theory, not in practice. Also, what the hell kinda name is Tedros, bro?

I miss dancing.

Day 9

My brother’s herpes acne has been horrifying me. Today, he woke up with a swelling on his face. I already have period acne, and I can't deal with this right now.

While we’re having coffee, my mum asks me my plans for marriage, and, for some reason, I start feeling trapped. I mull over this while shitting and realise that I’ve been constipated from no journaling. So I think, hey, why not document this whole thing already?

After unsuccessfully trying to go to the local bookstore to get a new thing to read, I realise I have an unread book on my bookshelf. Now that I’m done flashing you my intellectual sluttiness, I think I’m gonna go read.

Pray I don’t get herpes, man. I need to lecture my brother on not kissing disgusting-looking girls. Or on sexual hygiene alone. And after discussing my sex life with my mother, I’m kinda splattered about how to have a sex conversation with my brother, but at least I won't be starting from scratch.

I watch some Impractical Jokers and then go for the next movie on my list—Imaginary. A comic book illustrator moves into her childhood home with her husband and two stepdaughters when she realises that the younger, Alice, has an imaginary friend with not the best of intentions. The movie got some hate for reasons I don’t understand, because it had me hooked for most of it.

Then, I went with It Ends With Us. Which, by the way, begins with a cringeworthy set of dialogues allegedly written by Ryan Reynolds, but the movie kinda falls flat by bringing up a theme as serious as domestic violence, but does very less to elucidate on the gravity. Which I understand, but I feel will fail to touch or empower people who have to spend every day debating whether they should leave their abusive spouses.

Apparently Blake Lively used a lot of her star power to change the movie script. And honestly, I don’t know if that’s the best way to go about it. You’re an actor, and making improvisations to your own character is justifiable if you think it will bring the character out in all its glory. Because when you use your stature to change a story that is already complete with a beginning, a middle, and an end, are you really doing justice to it? 

Sorry, Blake, but no.

Day 10

The more I stay home, the more at home I feel. 10 days later, the blinding tubelight feels less assaulting on the eyes. The lack of air conditioning doesn’t make me so uncomfortable. The lack of personal space irks me sometimes, but gives me a reason to take long walks on the terrace. The Indian-style toilet helps me clear my bowels better, and the food tastes more like love, every day. The bulky cotton mattress doesn’t feel clunky, and I sleep like a baby, not forgetting to mention, on time, every day.

10 days later, I resort to thinking something I’ve thought hundreds of times before: Why the hell do I not stay home for longer? Why does my Ahmedabad self mistrust this ‘home’ so much? Isn’t ‘home’ more about the people, and less about the furnishings?

And even though my parents didn’t do a great job raising us back then, aren’t they trying harder now? Don’t they do the utmost to make me feel loved?

I get the answer to all of those questions the moment I leave to go to the airport. Before I know it, I am full of the love and the care I’m very knowingly leaving behind.

My eyes are full - but so is my heart.

[Post originally written: September 15-19, 2024]