Harsh, one would think, for a normally outwardly calm person. But hey, this blog isn’t called Volatyle without a darned good reason.
First it was Delhi, where I just shut myself up for the most part, hanging out with a closed group of friends, not venturing anywhere beyond was absolutely necessary. I know it was a knee-jerk reaction to the events of early 2004… wow, six years ago. But that’s what I did with my life. Pined for one boy, spent all day in the company of books and bookish girls, and I’m not saying it was a bad thing at all.. it’s just that I was letting go of myself, bit by bit… letting go of the girl I used to be.
No one would say I’d lost my touch in those days. I was still quite fiery, but even then, something within me was dying out. I remember those sultry summer afternoons when I would lie alone, singing the same songs over and over again, face down, twirling my slippers round n round on the floor, in sync with the song. I’d get bored and solve a Sudoku puzzle, I’d pick up a book to read, then back to same songs over and over again.
Cut to 2006. Stuck in a room with four other girls, two of whom were depressingly dirty, I still managed to keep myself from screaming and hurling obscenities every time I saw the muck.
Until in Ahmedabad, I had stopped by the roadside for the hundredth time that day, asking for directions to an elusive celebrity’s home. And I suddenly realized how nice I was being to the man who had waved me off without giving me directions. A few years ago, I would have bludgeoned the man or at least say something nasty so he’d have a rotten evening. But I was keeping my cool, not getting frustrated. That’s not who I used to be.
That’s not who I am. I keep things shelved away too long nowadays. I think twice before verbalizing anything I want – at least anything significantly different from the norm I want. Oh, I have no qualms in asking shamelessly for the fifteenth glass of water that I don’t wanna drag my sorry ass downstairs for. But if I want to go out and do something on my own, I think for days, weeks, before saying it out loud, before doing it, for fear of disrupting the easy inertia of routine we’ve fallen into.
Since I returned from Cambodia, I’ve been itching to shut myself up in a room and think and write all about the trip. But I haven’t done it, for fear of ruining a perfectly nothingless afternoon. I have held back too much. But I don’t feel like I can break free right now. Not until I feel secure, which I don’t, in Saigon. I pine for the company of family and friends, for the beauty of our home before. But I’m stubborn about not wanting to go back to India and we left our home because, despite the beauty, we decided to leave it.
I don’t really know where this rant is going, so I’m gonna just sign off for now, hoping that things won’t fall back into old routine, and I will find some way to break the monotony.
