623: the day i looked good

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Last night, I sat in the car after driving back from Phoenix. I'd returned from a work trip to Lonavala. I'd slumped off in the cab ride to office. By the time I reached work, I was shivering with hunger and fever. My neck hurt. A slow fever was taking over. I wanted to get away soon from work, so my friend and I decided to watch a movie. So after a 12 hour work-day, I drove to Phoenix. There was a mighty traffic snarl. Took me two hours to reach the cinema. My eyes watered and my knuckles were clenched. I was very angry.

It was again a really late night. I had started feeling weepy all over again. It's like clockwork how the dark pain unspools on nights. Then the song 'Kuchh toh bata zindagi' from Bajrangi Bhaijaan came on. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwrCYAIdkeM) I love that song and I love that movie. This song is picturised on Nawaz, Salman, and the little girl when they're looking for the girl's home. They haven't found it yet but the mood is still cheerful and soft. Like when you know that from wherever you reach, there'll be no further walking or struggle or the possibility of getting up an going again. For some reason, at that point, I just felt that I have no home. I don't have a situation from where I feel I will not have to struggle any more. And all this while, the many meditations, the abstinence from liquor or everything else - last night, it felt that I was punishing myself. Like I was serving time interminably. All that was making me brittle and I was crumbling.

I don't want to die like this. Even if I have to live with this weepy chaos every single minute of my life, I want it to be well taken care of. It is still a part of me, however it is. Long time ago, a man I loved very much had told me, in anger maybe, that it was my destiny to cry. Much of my time since then has been either trying to get him to take that back or prove him wrong or worry about whether he is right. He's not in the picture anymore but somehow that statement had become my dictum to live by or against for all this time.

I feel now I am done.

Today I had fever and some weird deliriums. Later a friend got kharvas which is a sweet, milky pudding made of the cow's first milk. It is so tasty! I sat and ate one square at time, just soaking in he sweetness. Not worrying how fat I'll become or whether my pants will get tight. We went out to a pub after. I simply wore loose clothes. I drank beautiful, ruby colored Absinthe. After so many years of not touching liquor, I had Absinthe. I swayed to the music. My friend and I sat somewhere with our drinks and giggled. She clicked us.

In the picture, I glowed. The hair looks glossy, my eyes are bright, the skin's glowing, and I actually look beautiful!

Sometimes I feel that I think that my destiny is damaged in some way. And when that person said what he said, I felt that if I argued long and hard, then that wouldn't come true. But a destiny, broken or not, is what has kept me going for so long. My pain, my joy, my other end of the parallel line...today, I drank to that.

Even a broken destiny, I'm guessing, can say 'Cheers!'





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