From Bad Boys to Bad Men

My memories of adolescence often visit me as a colorful bouquet of half-remembered scenes—of discovering new books, of discovering new music (back in those days, you were considered a connoisseur who possessed the most esoteric of tastes if your iPod was filled with the albums of Linkin’ Park, Nirvana, and Poets of the Fall), and watching reruns of the Harry Potter films and F.R.I.E.N.D.S in the neighbor’s cable-connected television.

Between my undying obsession of reading about the adventures of a certain green-eyed son of Poseidon and the enigmatic genius of a certain teen-aged criminal mastermind, my afternoons in the weekends were often spend begging the lords of the dial-up connection to bless me with speedy internet so that I could listen to the music that was liked by the girls higher up in the social hierarchy of my convent school. You see, it always seemed that these beautiful ladies lived in a separate realm altogether. And I, self-pitying, insecure and corpulent, was always chasing their greatness. When they spent their afternoons pining over Daniel Radcliffe and Robert Pattinson, I was still trying to hide my not-so-secret crush over Alan Rickman. When they listened to Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira in their iPods, while mooning over boys who listened to Scorpions, Queen and Pink Floyd, I was still struggling with my addiction to cheesy Bollywood songs. And now, I cannot help but laugh at the shared cluelessness of it all. Adolescence, although painful, has hoarded my favorite stories.

But why this sudden soliloquy? You see, this afternoon, I cannot help but remember this old pang of obsessing about the wrong man while growing up. The good girls of the class mooned over Darcy, as I pledged my dreary soul to a certain wife-hiding Edward Rochester. The good girls dreamed about Disney’s Aladdin, and I was still stuck crying buckets over the Beast turning into the prince. The forbidden fruit, the dangerous idea, had always captured my heart. And it seems that literature and entertainment media is not far from such captivating portrayals either.

Khal Drogo and Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones

In the April of 2011, along with the rest of the world, there began my half-a-decade worth obsession over Game of Thrones. And let’s face it, the show, with its thousand and one faults, did change the viewership and perception of medieval fantasy shows in television. Suddenly, you were not supposed to cackle over overly fluffed-up gowns, like the ones in Black Adder. Suddenly, the queen was worse than the Wicked Witch, and let’s face it, we would all give a limb to stab Joffrey, our prince, multiple times. Game of Thrones was a game-changer, but it also set to establish a recurring plot motif that, though already preexistent, was not set upon stone just yet.

Let’s go way back to the first episode of Game of Thrones. A certain sequence where the young Daenerys is raped on her wedding night by her husband Drogo as she watches the sun set over the Narrow Sea. And yet, she makes the most of her situation, learns how to pleasure her husband and herself, and even bonds romantically with the barbaric Dothraki lord. And to this day, her relationship with Drogo is considered the most memorable, if not a continuing fan favorite, in the fan base. So, of course, you can comprehend the magnitude of the shock I felt when I finally got about reading A Game of Thrones in 2013, where I discovered that Drogo, in spite of being a violent Dothraki, did not actually rape his bride. Instead, he asked for her permission, which, although hesitant, Daenerys gave. Does that mean consensual sex sells less than the portrayals of rape? Is the easiest trope of establishing the brutality of a male character often relegated to sexual abuse? Is abuse, emotional or sexual, becoming the recurring plot narrative of establishing character depths of antiheros in modern television, films and books?

Damon Salvatore and Elena Gilbert in The Vampire Diaries

Leaving the trail of bloody innards and swords, let’s come to mainstream entertainment. From 2009 to 2017, The Vampire Diaries had quite the swansong of a television run. Although the ratings dwindled over the seasons, it still succeeded in being a mainstream phenomenon. And it did introduce Ed Sheeran to a much bigger fan base. However, observations apart, let’s talk about Damon Salvatore, the unpredictable and dangerous elder brother of the brooding Stefan, and his never-ending obsession/love toward the protagonist, Elena Gilbert. Damon was the quintessential bad boy. The showrunners used the age-old narrative to always keep the viewing audience on their toes as to whether the older Salvatore brother would ever be in the receiving end of redemption, in spite of centuries of ruthlessness. As inevitability would have it, he did become the staple “good guy” (or as far as Damon Salvatore can hope to be) and also got the girl. But here’s the thing. Let’s go back to the character Julie Plec started with. Here was this bloodthirsty vampire hell bent on ruining every nuance of peace his younger brother had and leaving a bloody trail behind while doing so. Damon seduces Elena’s closest friend/rival, Caroline Forbes, and using what the TVD mythos called “compulsion”, went on to use her as a blood bag for sustenance, while also emotionally and sexually abusing her in more than one occasion. So here’s the question. Is the new-age Byronic hero subverting into a sexual predator? It seemed that the showrunners completely forgot about this subplot as they went on to turn Caroline Forbes into the undead, while simultaneously humanizing Damon at the same time. On that note, humanizing the antagonists is a favorite trope of TVD. From Elijah to Klaus to Rebekah, almost every antagonist has been on the receiving end of such treatment. However, with Damon the cord snapped from logic a little too further away for the liking. Even while pursuing a relationship with Elena in the later seasons, Damon was prone to violent fits, unpredictable blood rages and a persistent underlying turmoil in the dynamics of the relationship, to the extent that the female protagonist was equally influenced and on the receiving end of the chaos. The result of this haywire plot was that the characters that they initially started out with lost the sketches that made their backbones and instead the audience was presented with a premature and mediocre hash of an unfeasible and illogical ending. Damon’s character deconstruction thus made a fundamental cornerstone in the holistic distortion of the show itself. On that note, the Twilight series (books/films) deserves a special mention. Dealing with the same mythos of vampires, it took a more vanilla take on the bloodthirsty mythical beings and unfortunately established some rather toxic tropes that were used repeatedly throughout the plot. From the stalker-like tendencies of Edward Cullen to the nigh invisible growth chart of the female protagonist’s character, Twilight was a rollercoaster ride into all things misplaced in both literary and film media. Dealing once again with the idea of being attracted toward the predator, or the “bad boy”, Twilight overused this motif to the point of making it a misunderstood representation of the modern girl’s idea of the perfect man. And with the millions of copies that the series sold, alongside the whopping 3.3 billion dollars worth of money it churned at the box-office, the Twilight phenomenon raged during its time. From posters of Edward Cullen to tee shirts that read Team Jacob and Team Edward, and yes, to even a spoof film, Twilight’s influence was beyond imagination. After all, mockery is the highest form of flattery at times, isn’t it?

Mr. Big and Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City

But then again, promoting abusive relationships as a form of plot narrative is a tale as old as time. In the 90s, the modern woman was hooked to a certain HBO TV series, Sex and the City. And the men would often see the show, in secret of course, to moon over the ladies and to comprehend the female mind. Sex and the City was a pioneer of its kind. Here was an unabashed sex comedy that supposedly offered a keen view into the female brain, about their ideas about relationships, life and yes, sex. Candace Bushnell became an instant bestseller and the show cemented Sarah Jessica Parker’s career graph as the newest starlet of Tinseltown. Here was this bold and beautiful sex columnist who spoke her mind, struggled to pay rent and partied in New York City like it was the last night of her life. Here was this 30-something lady who cared little about time drying up her eggs and lived carelessly, in the midst of books and shoes, and in the warm company of her three best friends. And yet, like every other show with their misinformed ideologies of the so-called real people they often present their characters to be, Sex and the City drooped into being the same predictable romantic comedy at heart, while using a toxic relationship as its front-runner. Mr. Big, Carrie’s lifelong love, was a man who was afraid of commitments, to the point that their relationship was more often down the hills than soaring along the mountains. His constant fear of commitment, his laconic attitude, his pestering indecision, and most importantly, his inability to either walk away or give Carrie the validation of a partner that she needed were constantly misconstrued as characteristics that showed him to be the ever-untouchable idea of the bad boy. And his presence gradually wrecked the character growth of Carrie to the point that she became just another lovesick clueless woman who confused her roles, be it as Mr. Big’s girlfriend or his mistress. The emotional abuse wrought upon her altered the very strengths that Carrie’s character sketch initially banked upon: her brashness, her live-in-the-moment attitude. It even influenced her actions and disastrous impulses that led to the ruination of her other relationships, be it romantic or platonic. And thus began the six-season worth of the same old will-they-won’t-they plot motif. The disparity of her growth led to the unhealthy obsession that has been associated with Carrie’s character as well, and it is because of this, and several such factors, that has now relegated Carrie Bradshaw to be heralded as the quintessential example of a 90s train-wreck.

Characters of Gossip Girl; from left to right: Dan Humphrey, Chuck Bass, Blair Waldorf, Serena van der Woodsen and Nate Archibald

And talking about shoes and pretty dresses, how can we ever forget the 2007 to 2012 phenomenon, Gossip Girl? Gossip Girl was a step above Sex and the City, purely because of the reason that the show was self-aware of its thousand hypocrisies. Every character was more or less the caricatures of the ongoing lives of what we concoct the rich elite to have. In a way, while watching Gossip Girl, every one of us started off as the respective Dan Humphreys, writer or not, on the other end of luxury. We all had that one untouchable complicated and damaged dream girl, we all swooned over Blair’s luxuries in the showrooms of Gucci and Chanel, and we all envied Chuck and his endless series of debaucheries in his black limousine. Hell, we almost pitied Nate Archibald for being the clueless rich boy, lost in his haze of choosing morality or loyalty. In a way, we were all the watchers on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge, and Gossip Girl never needed to take that glistened starlight away from its characters. And although it took precarious actions to humanize each of its characters, it never bothered to make them such so that its audience would find any form of relatability to them either; which was why the toxic undertones of the show were much more stilted than its contemporaries. You see, Gossip Girl was more insidious in its portrayals. In spite of its immense fan support, Chuck and Blair’s relationship was a rollercoaster of mistakes. Two extremely headstrong, proud, volatile and rigid characters, Chuck and Blair challenged each other in what can only be explained as something of a toxic competition. The whole chemistry of the two characters was based on the notion “can’t-live-with-each-other, can’t-live-without-each-other”. Over the course of the series, both characters become more and more embroiled in the sole purpose of sabotaging each others’ relationships with partners who weren’t themselves to the point that their character growths dwindled to their lowest. Blair from Season 1 still remained so in Season 6, at least on the surface, and her loyalties, though added to her magnanimity, it never truly humanized her to the extent where the audience could empathize with her character.  On the other hand, the stereotypical bad boy persona that Chuck exuded only led to the predictable deconstruction of portraying him as the damaged rich boy with daddy issues in the later seasons, further deteriorating any opportunity of growth. And the fragility of their respective egos only mirrors the amount of emotional abuse either of them inflicted upon each other, be it through Chuck’s endless philandering or Blair’s unending vindictiveness. Promoting these two characters as their primary couple was thus a horrible decision from the showrunners, especially when the show itself had started with devolving each of its characters. Another example of insidious emotional abuse was Serena and Dan’s relationship. Although it could easily be predicted by any Gossip Girl loyalist that Serena and Dan would end up with each other, the whole show ran on the possibility and impossibility as to how these lovers would finally be together. And although the simplicity of their connection, the fact that each character completed what the other lacked, was the crux of their relationship, the showrunners made the fool’s choice to reveal Dan, the one observer of the lives of the elites, the only character the audience remotely related to, as the gossip girl. And that put the purity of his feelings toward Serena in question, as for time and again, the gossip girl has gone on to sabotage her privacy. The fact that the showrunners made Dan as the manipulator, and the insider, of the group, was possibly a poor imitation of what could have been the construction of a grey character. Unfortunately, nuances of such plot motifs can only be acknowledged as well-written when there has been a prior development in that trajectory in the past. Moreover, the recurring, if not gradual, growth of Serena and Dan’s personalities over the seasons only went on to show how incompatible they were for each other. From youthful teenagers to cynical adults with their own set of demons, Serena and Dan thrived better as individuals who led separate, if not disparate, lives. Thus, putting them in the same box they started from in Season 1 after going the distance was probably the worst written subplot in Gossip Girl.

Portrayals of abusive relationships, falling in love with the bad boy, the dangerous one, have always been a much celebrated plot motif in both literature and entertainment media. We have all spent afternoons shamelessly pining with Catherine over a certain Heathcliff in the moors of Thrushcross Grange. We have all adored Darcy’s incapability of expression toward the opinionated Elizabeth as the nights dwindled toward dawn in between the pages of our wear-worn novels. But over the years, practicality has always won over. We could see the fallacies in such misplaced affections. In a way, this plot motif and our perceptions toward it has been a trajectory of our individual growth as well. However, many have taken the fall in such misplaced portrayals as well. I have witnessed men and women falling prey to the undying hope of attaining redemption in their failed love stories, questioning my lack of faith with such examples too. You see, falling in love with the wrong one is not necessarily an unforgivable affront toward humanity, not really. I myself have lived that same story over and over in my past. Yet, there was also courage to be found, the moment when each one of us understood that the story has finally ended and it was time to close the book, only to be opened to sift through its pages in those dreary nights of lonesomeness in years far, far away. So here’s to all the bad choices, the unfinished stories, and the broken beautiful ones; and here’s to hope, to courage, and to choosing oneself over every love story ever written.

The Love Stories of a Miniaturist

Father had always taught me to look at the bigger picture.

I would come from school, the itch of my dried-up tears begging to be scratched out of existence, my mangy hair disheveled from the hours spent in fighting my bullies.

Father would say, “One day, these memories will drown, and you will only remember its littlest fragments.”

Of course I refused to believe him then, stubborn little wild child that I used to be.

Now I only remember the strands of brown in her black hair, her raging beady black eyes, and the scratch of her nails in my arm, the scars long gone.

I was a miniaturist long before I discovered love.

I was searching for memories long before I lost myself in remembrance.

The little lane behind the assembly hall of my school, the one that witnessed me devouring the words of a hundred stories,

The golden intaglio of a hardcover’s title, its touch still sheltering the first moments of a childish smile that would often bloom in between my lips,

The taste of the first fruit in summer, its yellow-orange pulp finding little corners to hide in between my still-milk teeth,

I realize I have been collecting pictures long before I knew how to capture them.

So when he strode in between sixteen and seventeen, his towering frame overshadowing my little self effortlessly, I remembered the warmth of his embrace, his ever-encompassing arms still etched into my skin.

The love has long departed from my home, only its dwindling memory sometimes knocks at my doorstep, unwelcome yet unrelenting.

Yet Love never failed to thrash upon me after,

Sometimes, it was the lingering smile of a beloved,

In another, it was the lilt of his voice when he called me Red.

Time, my enemy in each story, has robbed me off the fervor,

Choosing only to leave a heart-shaped box of memories in his wake.

But the faraway caress of a past lover,

The kisses shared in the lovelorn lonesome evenings of an age-old staircase,

The softness of a lover’s wrist, wrapped in a hairband, the one never used to tie her crimson curls,

They have remained.

So when you arrived today,

My new guest, my newest curse, my new reason to crumble once again,

You asked me, “Why do you say you shall be gone?”

And I wished to offer you a thousand words,

I wished to tell you that I will remember the rebellious brown that glimmered underneath a golden street lamp in your black beard,

I wished to tell you I will remember the hapless smiles you would often offer me in between my chaotic words,

I wished to tell you I will remember you in the million similarities you found in me and the phantom memories of women you once knew,

I wished to tell you I remember the sound of Red, the color of her raging mane, the warmth in his arms, the image of her bare feet upon grass still covered in morning dew,

I wished to tell you that I have long since loved pieces of you,

Yet, I could only say, “A miniaturist’s curse, my friend. You shall be another memory I once knew.”

Alice in Winterland

The morning comes with the hues of gray,

A silence pervades.

Alice wakes up, somewhere between the dying night and a birthing dawn,

And pulls at the shades.

 

Piping hot tea, or was it a cup of hot chocolate?

The foggy mornings eat away at the memories,

Voices come and go, some happy, some sad,

Each smothered in a sheath of bittersweet dreams.

 

There is no rabbit hole anymore.

The snows have made sure to hide the gaping hole.

No Mr. Rabbit scurries away,

No Mad Hatter comes by to offer a cup of tea,

Even the Queen of Hearts has been blown off somewhere,

Perhaps by the winter winds, perhaps she was never here.

 

The evenings resemble the nights now,

And the nights become the final verses of lost evenings.

Crackling fire impregnates endless silences,

Somewhere, a bonfire rages.

 

The scent of Wonderland is lost now,

Magic dies a sad, sad death.

The Caterpillar no longer blows wisps of smoke,

The moon no longer reminds her of her favorite feline,

And the Cheshire Cat smiles between his riddles in another land.

 

So Alice traipses in reality,

Tweedledee and Tweedledum no longer in toe.

Colors no longer burst like blossoms in springtime,

The fireflies glitter no more.

 

The story has ended now,

Endings, after all, are just endings,

Happiness and sadness entwine like cumbersome strings,

And the Jabberwock no longer bats his dreary black wings.

 

 

Masters of the Universe: A Review of I’ll Give You the Sun

Somewhere in Jandy Nelson’s book, Jude gives the trees, the stars, the ocean and even the sun to Noah, her twin brother, all in exchange of a face, of a portrait. And in that moment, as I read across the lines, once, twice, thrice, and over and over, I realized in some 400 pages, that for a moment, even for only the briefest speck of time, the sun was all that could be given and yet, so much more, so much warmth, so much brightness and infinite love could be gained in exchange.

Nelson spins a tale stuck in the melancholia of opposites, of dichotomies that crave to touch one another, only reticent for the underlying regret and self-loathing that lies in between. With overarching narratives of identity crisis, fragile familial bonds, the discovery of one’s sexuality and the undying passion towards one’s art, Nelson stems out a simple plot that covers the perspectives of two congruent narratives in alternating timelines, only to fluidly intermix the two in one wholesome concoction of masterful completion, something which I admit is extremely hard to achieve when the para-text of a novel is the size of a gigantic universe that spitefully looms over the characters and their unique voices.

Beginning the story with Noah’s narrative, a voice that is woefully subtle and loud about its desires at the same time, Nelson tells the story about a young adolescent boy who is passionately in love with his art (drawing portraits) and discovering his homosexuality through his bubbling puppy love towards the neighborhood boy. Mixing magnanimous quotes with the touch of innocent erotica, Nelson brings the mind of a homosexual softly, slowly and most importantly, with empathy.

The narrative then shifts to show Noah’s perspective towards his wilder twin, Jude, who is freer, feistier and the apple of their father’s eye. Jude is reticent to expose her art, yet hedonistic enough to freely surf in the California bay, drawing the lustful eyes of all the male residents in the area.

But the point of contention gradually emerges as the twins’ mother, Diana, comes into the plot. Battling to gain her attention, the twins fight in every sphere, from art to their secrets; everything is an act of winning the love of their art-loving mother.

Intermingling with this sibling rivalry, Nelson blooms an innocent, almost intangible, love affair between Noah and the new neighbor, Brian. Perhaps the most iconic sequence in this narrative is how Nelson beautifully pens a scene where the two adolescents watch the constellation Castor and Pollux through a telescope one night. The voice of Noah’s longing, intermixed lonesomely with his hesitation, brings out a splendid nostalgia, an ode to the memories of first love.

The novel then sweeps over and falls into the narrative of Jude, the wilder twin, and the timeline too speeds over to a couple of years later, leaving unanswered questions that intrigue the reader to the fullest. Unraveling mysteries from the previous narrative, while simultaneously weaving the inner dilemmas of Jude, Nelson walks a fragile line that might bias the elements of the narrative and unbalance the scales at any moment. Yet, the writer succeeds in maintaining the brittle balance between the past and the present, and even brings to life the words of the supporting characters.

Continuing the theme of conflict, Nelson then shows a more mature version of adolescent love through Jude’s narrative, as she spins a more reluctant love story between the quintessential bad boy Oscar and Jude. Shoving into it, she plays the underlying dwindling passion of Jude towards her art (making sculptures) through the interactions with her mentor, before she begins the face-off conflicts between the twins, inadvertently beginning the vulnerable climax of the plot.

I’ll Give You the Sun packs in a strong narrative, overarching themes, scaled characters and the sine curves of rising and falling character development. It makes a poignant effort at a social message with the subtlest undertones, but never lets that overtake the voices of its narrators. Jandy Nelson stays to the core of most tropes used in a coming-of-age novel, but her greatest credit is how she uses her well placed twists to build a new visage in a seemingly easy plotline.

However, the one thing she fails at is to bring out the deliverance of certain characters, especially the twins’ father, with relevance to the actual plot, therefore creating questionable loopholes at times. Although this creates holes in the layer of the voices, she does make up with her own narrative in the end, at times through dragged descriptions and sometimes through incomplete information.

Nonetheless, the novel rises above all else as a poignant read, with its textured characters and unique narrative skills, with a far more fleshier sketch than her debut novel, The Sky Is Everywhere. It is interesting, therefore, to see the author’s development too through the consecutive readings of both her books.

Finally, reading I’ll Give You the Sun is very much like its soulful quote, “Meeting your soul mate is like walking into a house you’ve been in before – you will recognize the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves, the contents of drawers: You could find your way around in the dark if you had to.” You would know the flow of its story, and yet seek out its journey just the same, as if finding your way around the dark in a home that resides in your bittersweet memories.

A Case of Forbidden Something

 

I like to think of you as a basket of starlight lilies. Sure, it is not the most beautiful flower that blooms prettily for her admirers. But so are you, with your half-scathing words that are lathered in sarcasm and served on a platter to fool the rest of the world.

I like to think of you as two hands holding when the sun is not looking at them anymore. I like to think of you, as the warmth that is enclosed in between those embracing palms, remains like the remnant of a story left unspoken. They are not sweat-kissed anymore, not like they were last afternoon when they laid, conjoined, each line, with its separate destination, congruent to the other, as if right there, in that very moment, they whispered to their destinies, fuck you.

I like to think of you as something akin to the bite-marks on my lower lip, the ones that I spend a lifetime giving to myself, when I catch you looking at me, as I try to look away, only hopelessly gazing at you once again.

What would they say? What would they say if they ever read my eyes, peeped into my thoughts, turned a blade through my heart and bled out its secrets?

Will they be ashamed?

Or more importantly, would you be ashamed?

I like to think of you as the interludes between Madonna serenading to some bearded Mexican fellow to ‘La Isla Bonita’, when those unknown instruments go tip-tap-tipper-tapper to the tone of something tangibly untouchable.

I like to think of you as someone I have touched, in some forgotten dream, perhaps in another lifetime, and now, I am just a ghost, retracing those old roads, hoping they would lead me to you. Who knows? Perhaps we will meet somewhere in between and lie to each other, saying they were crossroads, before walking away.

I like to think of you as a forbidden fruit, one that I have already tasted. But the gods were cruel. Their punishment was to make me forget how you did taste in the space between my lips and teeth, the warmth that I must have felt when the droplets of you trickled down onto the flesh below my teeth, warming my mouth, warming whatever was left of my soul.

I like to think of you as the secrets friends share when even the moon hides in the night. I like to think of as those secrets that the stars steal away from them, when those shining tricksters peep out of their cloudy caverns to listen to their words.

And I would keep counting, counting endlessly, until I remember all that I think of you, until you remember that maybe, just maybe, I like you to think of me too.

Go Make a Home for Yourself Today

A wise woman once said, ‘Even being alone, it’s better than sitting next to a lover and feeling lonely,’ and I wouldn’t have discovered her words later in life, wouldn’t have been none the wiser if I hadn’t walked out of my home that day and watched a movie alone, forever igniting my passion for watching films by my lonesome.

On a drizzling day of February 2012, when the lovers strode past me, huddled in each others’ arms, towards the theaters, I had taken my cynical self for a movie, something that I would laugh about in the coming years, thinking how I had specifically used the term—“Dating Myself”—to describe that incident in future dinner-table conversations.

I had been bitter, and chewing the corner of lips, as is my habit and that of the characters that I end up writing about. Cursing every last of these oblivious fools, for they were oblivious to life and her many woes, for they were oblivious to the incumbent sadness of never really belonging anywhere.

Because I had never belonged to anyone, especially not to myself.

After all, even my self was just as temperamental as I was. When I tried to woo her, she had made it abundantly clear that she needed to be courted, loved, adored, and given a sense of belonging before she would let her secrets be known.

And so, when all hope was almost lost, I had taken my self to a date.

I had got myself a bucket of the most cheese-infused popcorn, not to mention the overpriced glass of Coca Cola.

Now that I think about it, I don’t remember the name of the movie I had watched that day. I am sure it must been something absolutely horrendous. But I do remember that I had decided to “date” myself on Valentine’s Day ‘12, as is the cliche of every stubborn heart in the world.

The results had been horrible—I had cried buckets over some character dying, I had spilled Coke on my new tee shirt, and I had wasted almost half a bucket of those tasteless abominations when I tried to get up from my seat at the end of the movie.

Soaked and poorer by five hundred bucks, I had returned home from the disaster, promising myself that I shall never let myself be tortured in this way.

Suffice to say, I never really kept my word.

As the years passed by, I befriended myself. And in turn, she showed me my loneliness could be turned into something akin to a pleasant solitude. She gave me words, filled me up with characters from books and movies, and strung up the emptiness of my otherwise silent world with music, even if I was quite disinclined towards the new addition.

Inside us is another person, another self that is waiting for you to only ask, just ask, to show themselves. And believe me, even if you drag them through the worst movie dates, the most tasteless of dinners, and even the worst of heartbreaks of your life, they will never abandon you. They will never say goodbye.

I see myself, I see her and I saw the empty unfurnished room inside my soul that had existed before she welcomed me in. It was a greyscale box of nothingness, with no heart and no memory to treasure in the darkest of times.

And together, we had colored it, painted it with a thousand more colors that the spectrum still hides from our eyes. We had furnished it with love, hope, even our sorrows, and our most secret of memories.

Sure, there were heartbreaks after. My self and I found ourselves decorating our home for guests who wouldn’t stay long enough to call themselves family. That they would sometimes leave with a piece of our furniture, stealing our memories, our hopes, perhaps even our belief that we could love again. And sometimes they would be kind, kind enough to leave a piece of themselves for our safekeeping, a memory, a memento of a scent, a voice, or a phantom touch. And she and I, we would caress it, keep it safe, locked inside the most secure corners of our room until they came to claim it again.

But for you to see all of this, you would have to know yourself first.

Know how beautiful, how wonderfully, heartbreakingly priceless you are.

I found that when I had taken myself to see some film in a lovelorn theater.

Perhaps you would find yourself in the midst of words, or perhaps in the unread corner of a storybook, or even in the melody between choruses of a song.

Who knows?

But that is your story to discover.

So find yourself.

And love yourself.

After all, you are your soulmate.

Hold onto yourself when the storms rage, when the sea seduces you to leave out the rest, when the mountains call you to leap forth, when life whispers your last goodbye.

Hold on, because your strong and fragile heart needs you.

Hold on, because that soul is yours to keep, to protect, and to cherish until it is time to depart, together.

Just hold on.

Chester Bennington: A Childhood Memorabilia

I was fifteen when the first barrage of adolescent rebellion swarmed my homestead, me as the nexus of course. Suddenly, my vision cleared overnight and I had convinced myself that I was surrounded by ordinary filth that would choke me to death if I didn’t run away now. That I had to be different somehow if I had any chance of survival.

So, armed with a copy of The Outsider, and feeling quite confident, might I add, I set off for school. But as every hero of any story, I needed my personal playlist for vanquishing all evil. Unfortunately, I have been quite musically disinclined all my life. And even now, as I remember the awkward dates where I have been asked what kind of music I listen to, I still cringe, thinking about the side-way glances I would give towards the café door and calculate how fast I could run for my life.

But at sixteen, one of my classmates saved me instead. I remember there were incessant rehearsals for a certain play that school year, and happily obliged to bunk classes, I tucked myself away into corners while one ear always collected pieces of conversations from the popular womenfolk.

One such name regarding music was Chester Bennington. At sixteen, and absolutely unaware about the world, I had no idea who this man was, except that he sang in some band called Linkin Park. So when they turned their glares at me, my mouth decided to have a mind of its own and say I listened to Chester as well. And seeing the magical change of their expressions, I doused myself some more in my lies, borrowing information from broken conversations and piecing them together with phrases like “Hybrid Theory”, “Numb”, and “In the End”. Suddenly, a stranger named Chester had metamorphosed the mousy awkward nerd in the corner into an attractive introverted intellectual who spent her days amidst tasteful books and music. And still I had no idea who he was.

That was until I decided to end my hypocrisy and actually listen to “Numb”. The first time I had heard the song, I admit, I understood nothing. I was absolutely impaired to comprehend American accents, and an American accent with music was my personal brand of nightmare. I remember I had felt there was a lot of misplaced anger, impotent angst and a lot of screaming. And whenever the chorus came, I would start “singing” those incoherent words too. Finally, Google saved the day and when I actually found out the lyrics of the song, the clarity was exhilarating.

Can’t you see that you’re smothering me?

Holding too tightly, afraid to lose control

‘Cause everything that you thought I would be

Has fallen apart right in front of you.

And suddenly, these four lines were everywhere, from the last pages of my notebooks to the blackboards of empty classrooms.

Chester Bennington didn’t save my life, far from it. Perhaps at sixteen, it wasn’t required to be saved just yet. But he did fill me in with words, words that I didn’t know I needed until that day when I was dawdling in some lonesome corner.

As the years flew by, “Numb” paved the way for “In the End”, which led to “Shadow of the Day” and “Castle of Glass”, all thanks to the randomness of YouTube. And most of the times, I admit I couldn’t understand a word until I pulled up the lyrics from some shoddy website. Yet, for the first time, it seemed that words could make a home for melody, and there I could be, in something akin to a shelter.

Chester was a doorway, a doorway to a world far greater than I could imagine in my wildest dreams. And although he led me to many a tragic figure in the music industry, from Cobain to Mercury, I never forgot my first friend. He was, and always will be, a memorabilia of a childhood lost, and half-remembered in the sweetest dreams.

And perhaps, just perhaps, something lets us step into a haven of surrealism amidst our realities. How else can I explain that after spending half a decade of not listening to Linkin Park, I find the news of Chester’s death on the night YouTube decides to play “Burn It Down” one last time? As if my old friend was still here, still blaring from my speakers, and the whole world was lying to me.

I didn’t shed a tear for you, Chester.

There was nothing left to cry for anyway.

Because you see, I am strong. I am a strong woman who bites her lips to stop herself from crying beside her favorite aunt’s deathbed. Because crying is for the weak. And I have long since promised I would be strong, I would survive.

Even if I forgot to laugh, sing and live along the way.

Or maybe, just maybe, I have remembered all my sadness and frustration, and finally let it go.

Maybe that was what you always wanted.

Maybe that was what I always sought.

But then again, in the end, it doesn’t even matter.

Scars

Do not show me your tempting perfections. Show me your scars.

As You Remember Me

“You shall never lose me, for your love has forever bound me to your memories.” Let these words not be the end of beautiful souls who are lost across the immensities of time. So love madly, love powerfully, love until the people around you learn to love life too. Because only love can save us all.

Letter to an Old Friend

In all our lives, I think we have been the cruelest to our own selves, our own mistakes, and our own tales. Perhaps this Christmas, we can find some forgiveness, not for our sins, but for all the madness that has been. Note: I apologize for the small font size. This poem is something which I felt that needs to be voiced to each one of us to our old selves. And hence I have tried my best to make it as legible as possible by fitting it into this post. Thank you for reading. Always.