Journeys are refreshing, whether it is taken outside or inside. I am taking you to a journey to the interior of my brain to see what is happening there right now.
Have you ever felt it urgent to pee, while starting for a journey? Every time before the journey was about to begin, my uncle went towards the coconut tree, to the left of the house, for the same purpose. Don’t think I am going to give you a detailed narration on what causes people to urinate. I am not a medical doctor or a psychiatrist to give the reasons that cause people to go for loo before travelling. Just reminded of one old practice, that’s it. Before undertaking my current journey I want to tell you that I am working on to fix an emergency situation which I am facing right now.
It has been three months since I am sitting to write a 200 or 250 page thesis and am being bullied by many thoughts which were urging me to sort out their issues. This created a great dilemma and I was pondering over whether to succumb to their plea and permit them to take a leave. I tried my level best to control them, because I was planning to release them after my writing work is over. You may not know; I have been working hard to mend my mind and it is worn out totally of the stress which it has been taking, from the time I started using it wilfully (Maybe from the time I decided to have a life of my own!). I am unclear to make any sense of its condition. It is a closet of disordered, shattered images from the past. A conflict was always there between the body and the mind and finally the body would succumb to the intricacies of the brain and used to fall flat. Unfortunately the current mental capacity is not favourable to plan and to carry out things as and when the body requires. It is asking for the right time, a right place and right mood to be active.
Some visuals are hanging there like the remnants of an abandoned building. I have decided to throw these old things out and clean them to get a perfect picture of the days in front of me. This plan struck me only recently (during the 2020 lockdown) after attending a four day training programme, titled “Uplift Yourself in the Universe” which was based on the Law of Attraction principle. So I have decided to free them tonight. Usually I release the ghosts inside by pulling them out on to a white paper in the form of poems or stories. Till then I remain as a prisoner to those which control my brain.
A background study or retrospection is necessary at this moment. I began forming visuals in my mind from the time I started experiencing a lack of camaraderie. I don’t know exactly from when onwards. I had only a very few companions in life who visited my chamber and stayed there only for a short span of time. I am talking about those who left me when I least expected. Suddenly I am reminded of Julius Ceaser’s phrase Veni, vidi, vici”. Thus “they came, they conquered and they left.”
I lived with two types of images in my mind-the broken images and made-up visuals. I had two different experiences with them. I will tell you about it slowly. The broken images were left inside my brain by people who were so close to my heart, and those images were a continuous disturbance for years. I used to be a total slave to its instructions and commands and was not aware of how to come out of its control. What I did was to assume them to be a 3D picture as they were once before and I lost so many eventful years watering those dead plants. Those broken images are still lying there in a corner. The other category is “made up visuals”, pure imaginations which I formed in my mind and lived with it thinking of it as my real life.
The Bible says “in the beginning there was a void, and then God created the Earth and man in his image”; and then God went to his abode thinking all was well and good here. But in reality things were not going on smoothly. The physical world was not offering what I wanted or it was not letting me to be the “real” me. My real identity was deliberately hidden behind the two tags - “fatherless” and “girl” -which offered the life of a secondary citizen. These two “qualifications” gave me no rights to have a dream for myself, not even the freedom to laugh out loud.
Before I was four years of age I was all mean and matured. While growing up I had a strong conviction that I had already grown big with many attributes. I was bossing around the servant boys in the house and irritated them. I had to go to school at the age of four not as a routine procedure (much against my wish) but to fulfil the last wish of my father. There I showed my rebellion by demanding my mother to buy me a chewing gum every day before stepping inside the school gate. Eating chewing gum and creating bubbles were the only time pass I had inside the class. Everything else happening was boring. The ladies standing in the extreme front seemed to me as clowns who came to do something irrelevant. I enjoyed my visit to the school pond during the free time and relished the sight of fish bouncing up and down. Still at this age it is one of my favourite sights. I left the abundant sight of fish and the experience of being carefree in the class after six months as my father’s last rites were over by then. Afterwards I was taken to another school near my maternal house. It was a traditional regional language school with thatched roof and no concrete floors. I sat on benches arranged on the sand and had a very refreshing experience for the next few months. Afterwards admission was taken in an elite convent school so that I would be given English education. Thus I had to choose another school and also a new identity.
I was forced to adopt a new name which was preferred by my mother. Though the older name was my favourite and was suggested by her brother, my mother felt it unfavourable to me as the first letter of it was one among the last in the English alphabets She thought it would not help me during the interviews when I opt for a government job in the future. I was given rigorous training at home to practice writing my new name which did not go inside my heart or my senses. Next day during the admissions though I wrote the original name first and was corrected by my mother, I never realised that I would be going to live with a new identity afterwards. I strongly feel that it was because I was ignorant of the reality that I did not react at that moment; otherwise the rebel inside me definitely would have retaliated.
Thus a new life began in that convent school with a new identity. In the lower classes I used to be the boss, the master, the matured one as I believed myself to be. So naturally I felt superior to all those small fellow kids of my kindergarten and primary classes. Whether it was in the playground or when the teacher was away, I showed them my grown up “self.” I used to pinch the LKG boys seeing them crying. I was the class leader cum group leader for the first standard kids. I used to beat some children in my group thinking it as my responsibility to teach them and instruct them to study well. Poor little creatures!! Few of them got really scared of my disciplinary actions and stopped coming to the class for a few days and afterwards brought their parents as security.
While at home when I wanted to talk my mind I had no other option but to wait to go to the restroom, to the school or during the holidays I had to write my mind on a paper and gave it to my friends when they visited me. No one was there to listen to my monologues, magical mental experiences, ideas, and anxieties at home. My only brother was not grown up enough to understand my craziness. And when he grew up, his interests never included me or my stories. As I grew up I assumed as the heroine of all the weekly magazine stories I read. I used to sit around and listen to the Ramayana, Bhagavatam read by big granny and dreamt of all the women Sita, Draupadi or Savitri who were left alone by those men, their husbands and considered them my role models. Consequently, a world was created inside the four chambers of my brain’s innermost parts, where I was the sole authority with no adversaries. Though India came out of the tough phase of emergency, I was born in it and lived through it most of my life.
In the household, I showed my vigour and vengeance only on paper. I wrote a manuscript tabloid which I named “terrorist”. Finally my urge to become a naxal or maoist ended up in writing satirically about the events happening around me, on a paper. I made copies with carbon paper and distributed. It was read only by two souls and not by the entire community and hence no transformations happened. I was the first and frequent reader and the second one was none other than my neighbour boy who was the playmate of me and my brother. No one realised that something was fuming inside my mind. As a school going girl, I used to stick paper on the wall with some critical comments about something unacceptable to me happening in the house when my uncles come on vacation. I had no courage to tell them or question people there. Unfortunately all those papers seemed to find their destination on the floor the very next day itself. It was the uncle who came for vacation slept in the room and hence I could easily identify the culprit behind ill fate of my comments.
For my peaceful moorings and in order to kindle my creative self I had to go to the toilet. I can’t go there frequently also as there was only one toilet. It was located a few yards away from the house. I would be happy if its floor looked dry and clear so that I could imagine and brainstorm ideas and display them all there. I used to draw some pictures on the red floor using water. And as you know, it is not the normal place to visit to relax. Who will believe me if I say that I needed the latrine to imagine and to make myself happy? Don’t think that it was an a/c compartment or a place where I could listen and dance according to the tune of famous singers. There I got only fresh air, fresh light, and complete peace. It was in the middle of a mangrove, cashew nut trees, bamboo trees and a few other trees. I heard the birds’ chirping often. The door of it had to be closed for security reasons. But still I was worried and used to check the narrow space below for the wild card entries. I mean the snakes, normal lizards and the salamanders or the green house lizards. I remained watchful even during the display and dialogue delivery. Luckily the creatures were also busy, with their own personal activities. The lizards were busy in search of a place to hide as the crows were so haunting. I remember seeing snakes enjoying their mating by swirling up in the air near the bamboo trees beside the toilet. During my visit to the reclusive place to set a world for myself, I created stories and talked to the characters in my imaginary world taking them as my only companions.
I was told that my little grandmother, i.e., my mother’s mother loved me though I had no clue about it. I didn’t accept it as I found no reason. I was not a special child even! It may be because I was the “Florence Nightingale of the house” I guess!! It was discussed among the elders in my mother’s house that the electricity connection was received in the house immediately after I was born. Anyway, I never heard of anyone uttering about any worthy quality I possessed which normally parents and grandparents used to discuss. Instead, I was known for all bad individualities. My mother was very sure that her mother loved me dearly as I was her first grandchild and that too I was her daughter’s daughter. For me, to love was to hold my hands, to cuddle me or to make me sit on the lap, to pamper and to tell me good old stories. I was very particular that those who loved me should definitely call me by a pet name. I practiced this but many never understood its relevance as I did. My grandmother never followed any of these and I never could accept the fact that hers was real love. I remember her even calling me some unusual names which later I understood were in the category of “derogatory” words. I took it as a sign of hate though my mother justified this by saying that I was not correct on my part giving tit for tat for elders which I was doing even as a child of 4, 5 or 6. The reasons of abuse and criticisms I got had no logic in it and I found it unacceptable and hence showed my anger. Now granny is no more but her memories make me shiver and I could realise that some feelings remain unexpressed and that’s also love. As a child I was also not able to realise her life and her sacrifice and I still feel she deserved a better treatment from the people around including me. When I grew up I have been on the search of that adoration and care I never experienced as a child. I never knew that being able to pretend and not to be “real” always were the ways and means to get love and attention abundantly. When a person is certainly real, there is no chance for him or her to be accepted
Oh no! I am getting late to permit the inhabitants of my brain out. Before next morning I have to take those dusted imageries, the companions of a lonely mind, the second category from the champers of my mind and throw them away not just to this paper but also away from the farthest of my memories. Thinking about the past is Ok. But this is not a past that I experienced or lived. It is just an imaginary screen play I wrote and visualised inside which I was rewinding and looking often for want of happiness. For the fresh buds to grow, for the new flowers to bloom, the old ones have to go away. Only then I will be useful for myself and also for the world outside. That’s why people say “Think positive”, because “What you think, you become”. The unrealistic collages I have been nurturing are blocking the universal energy to enter. I learnt the lessons about the power of subconscious only recently. So finally I am going to bid farewell to my long cherished creations. I am giving farewell to my heroine, farewell to her companions and farewell to her paramour who visited her at her place at short intervals; with guilt of leaving her alone.
Why should such a “reel” story be kept alive when we have many “real” life experiences fresh and many more in the waiting list?” I have prepared a set of dreams to work for, for the next year and prepared a VISION CHART. Night is leaving for dawn and I am feeling so fresh; so weightless. Now I can sleep peacefully without them.
