Trapped in between worlds

Boy do I need to update my blog! I'm just waiting for my muse...he/she just doesnt seem to be cooperating! Anyway as soon as inspiration hits me AND i get the time....will be pouring out my soul on electronic paper.

I do have one thought though...watched The Namesake...and kinda identified with Gogol. Feeling torn between different identities isn't something new to NRI kids/adults. We're neither wholly Indian nor wholly anything else...seriously the word "home" makes us pause and think...where do we really belong? Our upbringing dictates one lifestyle but our thoughts and minds are restless birds beating their wings against a cage...longing for something else we dont even have a name for. We dont completely identify with one single culture..too broad minded for Indian values, too narrow minded for Western values. Standing outside each world we're looking in wistfully wishing we could identify with something, anything...ghosts trapped in between two dimensions forever damned to roam the netherworld. The only place we feel completely ourselves is with other people just like us who know where we're coming from and actually get our jokes! That's the only time we feel part of a clan, a tribe, a species. What a feeling that is..having spent our entire lives never really belonging anywhere....more on this later...this really needs a lot of thought and reflection for more profound revelations..hah.

Inspiration

Pain fuels a writer's soul. In a way, we are a tortured lot. People react to pain in different ways. Some cry endlessly, some shop endlessly. Some grin and bear it. Some get so mad and let the whole world know too. We write. We hurl our feelings onto paper. We let that piece of paper have it all. We rant and rave in written form. In silent screams and soundless howls from the depths of our souls that prose is in fact our salvation.

A writer's passions and experiences are the source for the torrents of creativity that gush from his spirit. If we were never to suffer the agony of lost love, if we never bristled against injustice, if we had no compassion for the wounded soul great works of literature would have never been birthed.

And finally, writing is cathartic. It soothes the wild beast raging in our breasts. At last, all is at peace like the sea after a violent storm.

Love...hate it or love it, but u cant live without it

I spent my teen years like a lot of other teenagers believing the Mills & Boon myth. I too dreamt of a tall dark and handsome stranger sweeping me off my feet one day...and then we'd live happily ever after. Well marriage dispelled me of this notion...not to say I didnt or dont love my man. Is marriage an eye opener or what! I was so hurt to discover that the M&Bs were just lies spun out to ensure commercial success that for years later I had an aversion to anything even remotely romantic. But there lies a hopeless romantic deep within my soul...how much ever I try to deny it...it's just a part of me that I cannot amputate how ever desperately I would like to. I just have a childlike faith in deep abiding and perfect love even though my rational cynical mind says "wow what stupidity...and you actually believe that?!!" Part of me wonders if that perfect love is meant to come only from God and part of me wonders if and even hopes that perfect love exists here on earth among us mere mortals. When I would read fairytales out loud..and come to my favourite happily ever after part...my child would say "Mom there's no happily ever after" and I would be upset. There just was this hope deep inside myself that just wouldn't let go...and I would be so upset that even a child could see through the myth..but I couldn't. So these days, even though I've given up hope on ever having that "perfect" love, I've let myself go. Its like for years I was on this diet of realism and rationalism working out to build up my muscles of cynicism trying to get rid of my extra flab of softness and naivete inside. But now I've decided I need to love myself as I am extra pound of flesh and all. So I've just let myself go. I'm allowing myself to get emotional with beautiful love songs, weep with star crossed lovers, stare in wide eyed wonder at sacrificial perfect love in movies, root for Derek and Meredith to be together against all odds, believe with all my heart with lovers who lose each other only to find each other later in life. I've decided I'm not going to be ashamed of the softness inside of me because this is me. I'm going to let tears run down my face at the sight of passion and love in two people's eyes for each other. I'm going to allow myself to believe in fairytales again....

Being part of a species that's just 1% of the population

I recently took an MBTI test online. For those of you dumb freaks who don't know what that is..its a personality test based on Jung and Myers and Briggs and categorizes personalities into 16 types. Whew I managed to say that in a single sentence! Anyway, I finally know why I am the way I am. I'm an INTJ aka Introvert-Intuitive-Thinking-Judging person. The funny thing is I always felt like the odd person out, like I stand out in a crowd. Its like being head and shoulders above everyone else and being able to see things no one else can...that to the logical INTJ (who I didn't know I was at the time) is so absurd coz its so clear. In college I was labeled as arrogant (that was the word that defined me according to some morons who didn't even know me) and to me it made no sense coz I wasn't arrogant at all, if anything I was the opposite. Even as a little child I was always daydreaming. I would get lost in my own thoughts and ideas. I was always theorizing and coming up with concepts. I had my own methods and would usually stick to them. Everything always had to make sense to me. My social manners were awful and I still dread going into places FULL of new people. I hate making small talk. I'd much rather talk stuff that has value or meaning and is not a waste of time. Dont get me mistaken, I do love the company of people I'm comfortable with. My husband is an ENFP who is the quintessential people-person. I would envy him his perfect social skills and the friends he would make of even strangers. I did learn a lot of stuff from him but being the true ENFP he is, he NEVER finishes any of his projects and is a bit of a scatterbrain. INTJs CANNOT tolerate incompetence and inefficiency so there were some tough times in this marriage let me tell you! But in certain situations I would tell him this or this is going to happen, and it did just as I'd predicted. I thought I was psychic or something, but now I see its just plain logic and coz I can see the big picture faster and easier than anyone else. People do think I'm ruthless, cold, heartless, but I just know what has to be done and to me its better to get going on that than to get upset or emotional about it.

Shantaram, a fantastic read

I’m reading Shantaram by Gregory Roberts at the moment. Its really a fascinating book. Having lived in India for almost 16 years I know about Bombay the colorful and cruel city, the no-nonsense attitude of its people, and the way people seem to survive there by barely a thread. But seeing Bombay through a foreigner’s eyes, a foreigner who knew more about this Indian city than me a citizen of this country, was really an eyeopener in many ways. The author lived in a slum in Colaba for some time, something we so called sophisticated metro Indians would never deign to do, albeit his circumstances rendering him so helpless he was forced to live there. Another thing is, after all the negative press Indian cities, their poor infrastructure, and the vast divide between the rich and the poor has been getting in the western media, it was so refreshing to read about the love this so-called foreigner has for Indian people. He so clearly understood why things are the way they are instead of holding his nose at the stench and pooh-poohing at the seeming inefficiency. It’s so easy to be critical but when you delve deeper you find survival is the name of the game. Yes things have improved in India since the author’s experiences, but many things are still the same. I’ve lived outside this country for 16 years and in many ways my perspective on things is different from those born and living here. After living in countries where Indians have been looked upon as Third World citizens and having experienced discrimination in its worst form in so-called civilized developed nations, I came to the country I hardly knew, the country that I couldn’t call home in the beginning at all, and slowly over the years my fondness and love for my nation has grown. I’m so proud of my people who will do anything, go anywhere, and sacrifice everything to make the future brighter for their kids, I’m so proud of the enterprising and innovative Indian businessman, I’m so proud of our professionals who through their hard work have made India Shine, I’m so proud of our farmers who in spite of the vagaries of nature go day after day to their fields and patiently nurture their crops so today food insufficiency is a thing of the past. I’m so proud of this nation where you can be free to be whoever you want to be, where you can be free to express yourself, free to make something of yourself, free to dance on the streets in a baraat, free to worship whichever god you want to. India to me embodies freedom of the human spirit.