See.Understand.Feel.Condemn.Intervene.Fight.

There's a girl I've come to know, who goes by the name of Shama. At 16 years,she's probably seen it all,more than you and I have.Coming from a rather humble background,her days as a child were so much different from the days that any and every child has the right over.When all her job should have been  to play around in the mud,breathe in the air of insouciance, to let the rain splash over her impeccant self,to laugh so much that her stomach hurt , her days were consumed by tasks more fulfilling,something that we go to unimaginable depths looking for,so as to give meaning to our empty lives ...taking care of two differently-abled people..her parents.While there's clearly no denying the fact that she was the messiah in her parents' lives,there's also no gaze-averting from the fact that the poor soul missed out on her childhood,her 'flying up in the swings so high that the pit of her stomach churned with anxiety and trepidation' needs unattended .Performing chores like cleaning the soiled diapers,changing rags that they had for bed-sheets over four times a day making the tender skin on her hands puckered ,cooking meals,feeding her parents,cleaning around the house.It left her with no time, neither to take any lessons at school nor to go play with other children .She endured it all ,day after day,month after month,year after year until she once looked up and found a well dressed couple looking upon her with eyes of hope,affection and empathy.she didn't understand what they were there for, until her mother explained to her after they left that they wanted Shama to be a part of their family, as their daughter-in-law.

She felt nothing,having been rendered stoic ,bolstered only by the occasional zephyr of faith quietly sweeping past her.Neither did she feel saddened at the prospect of leaving her home nor did the countenance spoke of the slightest possibility of gladness at finally being able to escape a life of agony,her eyes narrating a certain sort of woebegoneness, apparent only to someone who had courage enough to look deep into her soulful eyes,as if she knew..

Shama was welcomed into her new home with the utmost sincerity,love , hope.Hope,because that is what had kept her new family going.Hope, that Shama would take care of her husband,bear beautiful kids and take care of the house.Shama's husband was 18 and needed looking after just like her parents did.He was differently-abled too and not as lucky as kids his own age to be able to pursue a career or lead a normal life(who decides what normal is,anyway?).

Shama's environment had changed,her fate hadn't.Just as she had stepped into her new home,her mother-in-law had put all the domestic helps on an indefinite furlough.She believed that since she was being generous enough to take the only daughter of the family (that never even had enough food to live on most days)in,she had every right to get the most out of the poor girl's miseries ,whose family wasn't in a position to say no to the proposition that had been made.

Shama went abt her life as though nothing had changed but, of course ,something had .

She started spending her days cooking meals for her new family with five members,scrubbing the toilets,taking care of her husband and listening to her mother in law ramble on about how she was there to bear children so they can grow up and take care of his father in the wheelchair and how she had a stature of not someone more than a domestic help and how the family had indeed done her family a favor by taking an uneducated girl off their hands.

Everything was going just how Shama's mother-in-law had hoped it would,until one day a friend of hers,Manju came to her house to meet her daughter in law and spotted some marks on Shama's forearms .Upon inquiring,Manju learnt that Shama had been cleaning the house wearing an expensive Coat that Manju's friend had gifted her and so she had let her have it.A long exchange of dialogues ensued in which the mother-in-law called Shama all sorts of names and told Manju that she had it coming.Manju saw how wrong her friend was to be beating up a child, who she brought away from her house promising her parents that she would give Shama the place of a daughter in their lives, for such a petty thing like that.Manju understood as did her friend that Shama was like a god's gift to them and their only shot at his son having a reasonable life ahead of him and yet Manju neither jumped to Shama's defense nor tried explaining to her friend that she's been abusing the child and punishing her for something that was no one's fault,the fact that her only son was going to spend all his life in a wheelchair.

Let us not even try to tell ourselves that we understand the kind of life Shama has waiting for her.

Manju came to me and told me how she'd considered it best to not interfere because she thought it wasn't her place!And I somehow failed to make her realize the importance of a bystander's intervention.

The power of our voice is underestimated by ourselves just as much as the voices inside our heads are silenced.

Not standing up for someone who has been silenced so much that he doesn't remember having a voice, makes you just as guilty as the ones committing the crime against the him.

If you've read this article and understand what has been said, then please raise your voice the next time you're presented with a situation similar to this.Remember to stand up for someone who clearly needs it or feel just as responsible as the perpetrator for the rest of your life for whatever the victim is subjected to.

no matter how hard you try..lil' bit of mask peels off day by day!

after a certain point,it ceases to make sense.people you were very fond of,no longer seem to hold your importance.things around are quick to change or perhaps it's just me who grows tired of being stuck with the same group of people with not the slightest possibility to grow.perhaps I am a parasite.I feed on people's goodness and when I have sucked out all that I could,I tend to outgrow them.yes,its either this or that.I'd rather not tell myself that the world has run out of genuine people or even my world for that matter for that's too negative a thought.I don't want to tell myself that people masquerade as someone I'd eventually grow to like but which they eventually would tire of being.The psychopaths in them take pleasure in shattering the image they had created of themselves.I'd rather that the fault lies within me because me,I can always change but the world around me will never.this way I can always hope to be a little better the next morning thinking I might find people being nice to me because I am a little less of a parasite today than I was yesterday.

It's either this, or that all the people I've met till now purport to be something else and I am an easy prey. I believe.and no matter how hard they try,little bit of mask peels off day by day and sticking with something they are not,is too much of an effort.And I am no longer an interesting prey either.they have found a new one now and once again the entire cycle repeats.it all starts from step one.the sweet talks,the late night coffee,the late night hanging out or staying up on phone,poking each other throughout the day,greeting with a hug when you'd met just an hour ago and then... the mask..it starts to peel off.

when you see it all happening to someone new,a whole set of memories whizz past.you're caught in a time trap and often times you know not how to escape.
one world we live in,full of psychopaths who feed on people's grief.you can either be victimized once,learn and turn yourself into one of them or be the victim forever.

I still want to drink chocolate flavored milk with a straw and be yelled at for making bubbles.

They aren't really there and yet they are,lurking somewhere in those dark corners of every humanly possible edifice waiting to pounce upon you from behind and just when you'd thought they were not to be met with,again.It touches upon our lives in a way so subtle that often times they can't be pointed a finger at,they can just be felt.
We try to duck,hide,run away but it comes for all of us one day and we like a twig suspended in a calamitous weather are left with no choice but to follow wherever it may lead us.They are the changes.From the tiny ones to the life-transforming ones.We hate them,dearly wish we'd not encountered them but we somehow fail to deny them and one fine morning we wake up to find out that we aren't left with a single trace of our old selves,born anew.There's this restless feeling in the chest,like a serpent uncoiling about..some sort of an unknown craving in the soul
that spurs us to discard the old shell and in it's place grows a new one..



People around hate to see us change but they are too.Aren't they?And thus just to keep up with the world bustling with tons of changes around and not to feel left out,we make a few amendments in ourselves knowingly/unknowingly.It's a part of growing up.We change and it's like our defense mechanism.It equips us with something that helps us fight the selfish,in the process making us selfish too but it's better than being left alone to cry.Isn't it?

The past haunts us and the present is a perpetual alteration between the contentment with inertia and irksomeness of changing.We choose the latter,more often than not.Fear becomes a part of us.Fear of changes.We go ahead neglecting the pounding in the chest that asks us to hold it right there.

We've come to dislike people/things we once thought we couldn't do without and it's not strange,just reality that was an idea
that seemed too far away once..

Like a baby outgrows his baby clothes,we also tend to outgrow a few people,some habits,a couple of tastes and it's okay.It just implies we're alive and growing.


In a dark alley sunlight sprinkles in through the neatly weaved cobwebs and there knuckles pressed onto the chest sits a tiny figure.Behind the staircase those infancy-arrested eyes,tear-stained cheeks,untied shoe laces,dishelleved hair.You know it's you.Or was.It's no longer you.
You wonder how such a metamorphosis could take such less time.

There was this time when all I wanted was to grow up.And now here I am,an eight year old trapped in a nineteen year old's body and it doesn't feel good not even when I have been counting days until my College days since grade 6,for even the most longed-for changes come with the melancholy of leaving behind us a part of ourselves.We die a little with every new change in us.

I want to go back.It's all happening too fast.It makes me sit up at night and cry and at times I can't even place the reason right.
I still want to drink chocolate flavored milk with a straw and get yelled at for making bubbles.I want to pee with the door open and hang a sock outside the main door for Santa to hide a teddy inside for Christmas.I wish I could be little again when all I wanted for my birthday was new varieties of chocolates for all my classmates and a huge teddy bear.When I was little,I got everything I asked for.When I was little I had this idea that life was like an ideal fairy tale,that if you were nice enough,you'd never be alone,never be misinterpreted and never be frightened but it doesn't work that way.
When I was little recess was always too short and life too long.The one thing that's not changed even now is that life's still long.And messy.
I am not a little girl any more but I'm still learning whom to trust,whom to ignore and whom to forgive.


People we've parted with on our way of growing up have left a mark undoubtedly but the purpose of our chance encounter must've been met with.They moved on and so did we.
All through our school life we're taught how to live but everytime we try to,we're wronged.
People who were supposed to never let us down,do and the ones we couldn't dream of a day without are taken away.They shouldn't teach us how to live but how to say good-bye.And let go.The 'living' part,we'd take care of that ourselves.
Just like the ink that seeps out of fingers onto
the paper and forms that beautiful-blotchy pattern,all our journies are beautiful,like no other and incomprehensible too at that.Few people have the gift to imagine the shape of
the pattern to be like something.It's just like stopping for a while,gazing up into the cloudy sky and making a something from the scattered clouds or...figuring the patterns out from where new worlds shall emerge.


It's hard to accept,but you can't go back because life would be not-unexpected and boring.Yes,
you will make mistakes and yes you will have tough times but as long as you can truly let all of it go,you can live and make it worth living.We have to know that things were meant to happen and that each day we will learn something new,the easier way or the hard way.


So,changes,they aren't always bad.We don't have to despise them.It just needs a little forgiveness and a little more acceptance.We've all done things in life that we regret having done.We'd rather have them erased from memories,ours and theirs and for that
we'd pay any price we can but it's all a part of growing up.We didn't have to hate ourselves for growing up,just had to forgive.

Everyone's ugly on the inside.

Yes.You too are.Ever felt something that you shouldn't?Ever thought you've morally gone corrupt?Ever hated yourself for feeling some way?Don't.Everyone's the same.Everyone goes through the 'I hate me' phase!It's only human and very natural.Everyone's masked.We never can dare to unveil ourselves,stand naked and face the crowd.We're too afraid to accept ourselves even when alone which in turn makes us loath our inner selves and feel that we'd be hated for what we are,once we put forth all that we feel inside.I don't blame us.

If you could read minds,you'd start to hate people and how they think but somewhere deep down you know you aren't much different.Everyone's different and yet the same.Everyone's dark,ugly,self-centered and everyone tries hiding their inner dark side behind a thick sheath of fake-ness,sugar-coated lies,hypocrisy et al.
I feel offended at times not because people have no values but because they don't even stick to whatever little that they have.And yes, I get carried away but don't you too?
Why do people do things they don't much appreciate others doing?How can you back bite and still come embrace me the very next moment?
"Slaves of the society" is all I get for an answer.I failed to realize,I fail to understand.
I know I should no longer take all those "promises" seriously but I am weak and I don't know how to walk without the ones I've held onto for so long.Promises are like old horses,often saddled,never ridden.Although I know things would change,I still make people "promise" that they'd not.I still yearn for something I have no business thinking about,for the once-upon-a-time clear vision's blurred with emotions.The blood smeared countenance speaks languages your mind can't hear.I reckon the voices in your head are much more clear.
I once again shirk back in agony,not knowing how to tackle,not wanting to either.I remain motionless but smile in self-appreciation nevertheless owing to one new realization.

They say they want to be immortal.That when they are dying each second.
By changing themselves,contradicting what they said just the very next moment,giving up on things and people who once meant the world to them,lying to themselves and by running away from who they are..because it's killing a part of them..bit by bit,as time ticks away and then they're dead.

Of late I've started to relinquish my grip on those long-held promises.It does make me feel less vulnerable,less unsafe and makes me seem tough but has only made me hollow..