khhushi

[khhushi]

5:00 a.m. ginger tea

My maternal grandparents have been my personal couple goals, always were,always will be.

My parents were busy when I was young, too busy to take notice, so my nana nani would hold my hand and take me places, I’d travel with them, study with them and play with them.

Without fail they were my favourite all through my life, you know how they say you look too close and the roses turn black but with them they always bloomed.

My nani was 17 when she married nana and he was 24, and not once does she look at her marriage of more than 50 years with disdain, she always has a glint, a sparkle in her eye whenever she talks about him, her smile has crevasses of mirth in them and if you listen to her talk about it you can feel the mirth and bliss of her married life flow into a piece of you.

Nana was a smart, young man. And as nani has told me hasn’t missed a single day since the day they’ve married to get up at 5 to make her bed tea and just sit and have a chat, they would start their day by talking to each other, by immersing each other in the anxieties and anticipation of what’s to come. Even when I was sleeping between them, I was never disturbed by their conversation at 5:00am, because it was never loud or angry it was a sort of calm that looms when the rain taps your window sill, there’s sound but it never feels like noise.

So for me I would know it’s 5:00am when I would smell the ginger of their tea and sleep peacefully knowing it was the smell of love.

My nana was a mathematician, he would make me sit down and study, he would give me 100 questions to solve a day and I would cry to nani about her cruel husband, and she would not once negate him but would whisper in my ear that I was given the challenge only because I could take it.

They were always a team, no matter who or what came they would hold hands and walk through.

My nana never called nani by her name, he called her ‘mahatami’ , loosely translated it means the greatest soul, not really the most romantic name for a wife but definitely the most respectful one in my opinion, and for me that become my definition of love, respect, for me they became my definition of love, I smell love in the aroma of hot ginger tea.

A few years ago, while making one of these bed teas my nana suffered a stroke, he lost his memory for a good chunk of a year and it was a slow and devastating process to bring him back to the mighty force of a man he once was. I visited him and he didn’t remember me, it is still the most painful memory of my miserable existence, how I wished he’d give me a 100 questions more to solve, I wanted to remind him of me, I wanted him to remind me of my capability.

He’s not completely better but the worse has left us. It was terrible for all of us but it was the worst for nani, he didn’t remember her, the love of her life struggled to remember his relationship with her let alone what he used to call her, he’d get frustrated and shout and my nani would burst into tears, for the first month or so of his recovery she was an absolute mess, she had lost her husband and was trying to find his reflection in this man in front of her.

After the initial trauma of it all, I saw something change in her, she was no longer bursting to tears but now she would sit and talk to him for hours to remind him of the great life he had lived, of the love they had shared, of the children they had made, of the home they curated out of everything they had. When he asked her who she was, she replied your ‘mahatami’.

After 52 years of their marriage for the first time, She started to get up at 5:00am to make him bed tea now. She did that till he was capable enough to do it again, it was painful and heartbreaking but she didn’t give up on the man she loved, she brought him back.

Today when I’m older and I again, to find some solace, get up early to have tea with them. I listen to them talk, my nani still talks of her marriage with a sparkle in her eye and my nana weaker but still there, still deeply in love with his wife, smiles. They still talk of the life they’ve lived and the love they’ve shared, and I still smell the ginger of my nana’s hot tea and I know it’s the fragrance of love.

~ Khushi Gupta

#creative wriitng #writeaway #i wrote a thing #excerpt from a story i'll never write #writers on tumblr #my writing #writer problems #writeundertheinfluence #writing #original story #story ideas #writersociety #writerscorner #kahani #story #story of seasons #short story

[khhushi]

Cusp

I like to think about the cusp at which a woman becomes beautiful, or to be more precise, considered beautiful.

For me it was somewhere around the summer of 8th grade, the braces had gotten out, and I looked more like a woman than I did a girl, that happened pretty early for me, the dangling sword of womanhood fell on me far earlier than it did most girls my age.

What happened as a result of this people started looking at me differently, especially the men, the hugs from older ones suddenly got tighter, the hands slipped lower than before, they lingered and made me stiff. For men my age it was almost impossible for them to comprehend when I said I didn’t want to date, my choice to be by myself till I know what I want was seen as a denunciation of their right over me.

More than once in my teens I was told by men both old and young, that they were what they called in love with me, and I know it should be flattering but it never was, because they never bothered to actually know me, who I was and what I liked.

They looked at me and created an idea of me till they fell in love with that idea, and when I refused to fit their idea I was labelled a woman of stone, similar to Medusa but different because at least her curse was her beauty, mine was other man’s idea of me.

I was a woman for whom men fought over, yet these men in their valiant battles never asked me if I had a part in it. It’s how people fight over land but the land doesn’t know who it belongs to, the fact they fought over me meant they hoped for ownership of me, but at least once the war is over people don’t blame the land, but in the battles over me somehow I was the one at fault.

I have heard men talk about their yearning for me, of ownership of me and about how they wished and dreamt of me with them, as if I’m supposed to feel privileged to be a star of their fantasies and about How they imagined my body.

Almost as if my being boiled down to how they saw me and not how I saw myself.

You see in all of this I was barely a human, let alone a woman, i was told I was pretty but never made to feel that, from the first man who looked at me differently I hid my body to a point even I couldn’t see it properly.

For the idea of men, i couldn’t perceive an idea of me, their ability to call their misconstrued lust, ‘love’ I started to believe I was incapable of it.

As a 16 year old I had started to believe I was incapable of love and being loved. I had convinced myself that I was a shell without beauty and I questioned my brain for being who it was for it would not let me believe the ideas of these worldly big men.

Today when I’m better than I was before, today when I love and I am loved by someone who I know loves me for me, I realise how the cusp of beauty is a defining moment for most women. The cusp is what unfortunately comes to define you, what you feel when you look in the mirror, what others feels when they look at you and how they perceive you.

I wish, I could say it didn’t matter. I wish I could love myself the way I did before men decided to see me in a way they want. Before I was an object of sexual desires and a Medusa without her head.

I wish womanhood was broader in reality than this cusp.

~ Khushi Gupta

#creative wriitng #i wrote a thing #writers on tumblr #writeaway #excerpt from a story i'll never write #writer problems #writerscommunity #writeundertheinfluence #writersociety #my writing

[khhushi]

Questions

When I was younger, not that I’m very old right now, but none the less younger, I was very inquisitive. It was annoying most of the times for most people, including my poor parents who had to answer the why of everything.

‘Maa, why is the sky blue?’

I was the kid who’d ask questions till the point the teacher couldn’t answer. It was often seen as enquiry, but most definitely taken as offence because most often their answers would run out, but my questions never tired.

It was, after a point annoying to the people I met and as my childhood moved to adolescence I transferred my curiosity to books. I read stories, facts, information. I consumed art, literature, cinema, theatre and music.

Credit to my father for always providing for it, for always trying to answer my questions.

He’d read up on things I’d ask so he could answer my questions, add fuel to my curiosity. My father ever so smart in my eyes would always have an answer.

As I grew I somewhere stopped asking and started accepting, I had fought too much for a 18 year old that I started to get complacent in my space. I had questions but I stopped looking for answers, I could see how bothersome my questions were getting, how my curiosity got provocative.

I’d ask my father, with the same puppy eyes but now we’d end in quarrel for his answers to my questions no longer matched my ideas for the same.

my dear father no longer could fuel my curiosity.

Today, as a half baked adult I’ve lost touch with art, I’ve not marvelled on monet’s genius or criticised Hugo’s narrative, I’ve not sat and watched a movie without the guilt of productivity.

I’ve become a slave to my ambition and I no longer know if it’s fair to my inner curiosity.

I still have questions but I’m not sure if I want the answers, I’m afraid to actually ask them, my idealism for truth has given way to the fear of denial. My eyes no longer sparkle at the idea of novelty but cower under its shadow.

Today as I sit with my own troubling thoughts, about what and how I should go about doing what I’m doing all I want to know is

Maa, can I ask you a question?

~Khushi Gupta

#creative wriitng #i wrote a thing #writeaway #excerpt from a story i'll never write #writers on tumblr #free write #writing #writer problems #writeundertheinfluence #writersofindia

[khhushi]

Digestible

I’ve been very frequently told that I’m difficult, not in a Regina George being mean way, but in a kafkaesque too much to handle in terms of thought way.

I’ve been told I expect too much, and I’ve been told I don’t even expect the bare minimum.

I’ve been given credit for caring unconditionally and I’ve been blamed for not caring at all

I’ve been objectified for looking a certain way and My existence has also been nullified as a woman

I am loved for who I show I am and hated for what I actually am

I’ve been made the centre of attention and I am also ignored

My opinions have been called intellectual and they have also been called pretentious gentrification of basic ideas

I’m told I’m hardworking and diligent while also being told I don’t get up from my ass

I’m told to not wear the large T-shirts and hoodies while being called a whore for showing a hint of my body

I’ve been told by my closest people that I’m easy to love and they have also told me that I’m the most difficult to understand

You see all my life I’ve been told about myself, but I’ve never really looked

I’ve been told that I’m supposed to be palatable, digestible.

But I’m not and I know it, you know it and I love myself for it.

~Khushi Gupta

#writer problems #i wrote a thing #excerpt from a story i'll never write #creative wriitng #writers on tumblr #writing #writeaway

[khhushi]

My boyfriend told me that everyone likes you because they think you look pretty and I love you because I know that you think pretty.

I swear to god the hold this boy has over me

[khhushi]

Home

When I was 5, my parents would drop me off at my grandparents for hours on end and that was my safe place, that was my home.

I would clutch my Dadi’s dupatta and follow her around. Every morning she would take me to the temple and I would diligently pray to whichever god she asked me to. While my grandfather would get me anything i would ask for despite how angry it made my mum. He’d carry me around on his shoulders every time I was too tired to climb the mountain to school and every evening he’d keep a sweet waiting for me in his pocket which I’d search for everyday with equal enthusiasm even though I knew where it was.

When I was 10 my nani nanu would take me on every winter vacation with them to wherever my mamu was then posted and then that would become my safe space, my home. My nanu would make me and my cousin sit and make us recite the tables till we could do it eyes closed even in our sleep. He would also happily be the muse to my hair experiments and listen to me complain about my mother hours on end. While My nani would tell me stories of her childhood and of things familiar to her and not so familiar to her, she’d tell me about demons and deities and everything in between and I’d listen to them and always ask for one more before bed.

When I was 15, I fell in love with my room, it was my 4 walled area where I was a creature without judgement and it was my safe space, that became my home.

I would fight with my mum and bicker but without a doubt at 8:30, no matter how much the fight had escalated she’d knock on my door and give me food, and then smile and whisper sorry in my ear and everything would be fine, better.

My father could always sense when I was worried or anxious so he’d check in on my room every night to see if I was asleep or reading a book, and even if I was up he’d never scold me but he’d come next to me talk to me about whatever new I was reading and then would stay till I could finally fall asleep.

Today when I’m nearing 20, and am very used to coming back to my parents house for 5 days maximum, have moved out to college, I don’t feel like I’m at home anywhere.

The town I grew up in feels familiar but is no longer comfortable and the city I live in is exciting but intimidating. Yet no where do I find peace.

I visit my parents and grandparents and I notice the wrinkles grow deeper, sparkly eyes become cloudier and muscles becoming leaner. Now I can feel responsibility more than I can feel reckless, the need to be present than the need to escape.

I feel like as I grow up I no longer know what my safe space is, what home is. It’s not in my Dadi’s dupatta anymore, or my Nani’s stories, not in my mother’s food or my father’s house. It’s definitely not in the city which is more an adrenaline rush than an adobe.

So where do you go to when you grow old?

Was moving out stupid or bold?

If everything changes and nothing remains familiar then tell me,

What do you call home?

- Khushi Gupta

#writer problems #i wrote a thing #writeaway #creative wriitng #writers on tumblr #my writing #books #excerpt from a story i'll never write #art

[khhushi]

you know how kids tend to subconsciously adopt the mannerisms of their parents? i wonder how far back that stretches.

do i laugh like my great grandfather, because that's the way my grandma laughed, and my mom copied her?

does the way my dad make comedic sounds when he's driving actually originate with a distant uncle two hundred year ago, who made funny noises in the horse-drawn cart because it made his niece laugh?

i wonder which of my little mannerisms came from ancestors long passed, and i wonder which of mine will echo in family descendants long after i'm gone.

[khhushi]

Existing in a female body

I don’t know why but I feel like my body aches every time I look at it these days,

And no I don’t need reassurance that I’m beautiful or my curves are waves of the tide which shouldn’t be hated but cherished.

But I hate it,

I hate my boobs and how everyone who ever looks at me cannot ignore those,

How on most days even modest clothing becomes merely a thirst trap and how so much of my life goes on trying to find the middle ground between sexy and slutty.

I hate how my ass protrudes from my back which makes me uncannily fat and how it makes my heart fall every time I can feel the gaze move towards it.

I hate how clothes don’t fit me perfectly, how it’s loose or it’s tight,

How every top is either too deep or too high?

How all of my body and beauty is not my say but someone else’s and someone’s spectacle ?

How all my being is a manifold of how my body looks and not how it feels ?

I feel so hopeless in one place which is supposed to be my home,

A so called temple of love becomes a vessel of self loathe.

I feel so consumed with guilt and grotesque for how I look in the mirror for the reflection is what I detest yet can’t be ignored.

I hope someday my existence shall be more meaningful than my thunder thighs

And if not,

I hope my thunder thighs feel more beautiful than my existence.

- Khushi Gupta

#i wrote a thing #writeaway #creative wriitng #excerpt from a story i'll never write #my writing #writers on tumblr #body image

[khhushi]

In so many years of this useless miserable existence I’ve written about a lot of things, emotions and stories that I have come across, in this life, and in my short years but not small ones I have penned down things that I have experienced or things others experience around me and not once have I ever done it for someone else, even the ones that showcase a significant other my art isn’t about them but about me, for me my art is selfish, if I may be bold enough to call it art, it is self centric and absorbed and it’s a way of my expression and not someone else’s.

Even my characters are a reflection of self rather than of something bigger, it’s smallness and insignificance is mind boggling to me.

Yet on one fine day a very good friend told me to think of a character, in a universe that already exists yet is in a world that is mine, I described my thought and he gave them life and made something out of just words and abstract ideas in my head.

My selfish art was made into a spectacle for the world to look at, to relate, to have a chance to be loved, for the world to see and for this moment and for this piece it wasn’t exactly mine but ours, of everyone who sees and reads it.

So to the friend who made something of my thought, you’re a genius not because you drew an abstraction of my mind but because you gave life to a thing I considered was dead.

~Khushi Gupta

#aesthetic #art #writing #i wrote a thing #excerpt from a story i'll never write #writer problems #writeaway

[khhushi]

Denial

I have realised that we’re the generation who doesn’t live in the denial of death, we wait for it, and I honestly don’t know if it makes us victorious or vulnerable.

And I personally think about death a lot, not because I’m suicidal or depressed, I just do. I think that’s because I like to plan things and one thing I can’t organise is the point my breath becomes air.

And I have realised how I want to die,

I want to die before I lose anyone I love because grief scares the living daylight out of me.

I want to die a mystery, I want to be forgotten, I want those I love to have full lives with no memory of me. I know that sounds sad but I want to be meaningless in death because all I do in life is search for meaning.

And I want someone, even if it’s only a single person to read what I wrote, not to eulogise me but to have a peek into my brain I couldn’t provide while my heart was beating, I have so much to say and I believe atleast one person should listen to it.

And lastly I don’t want a funeral, like I said I don’t want to be remembered, I want to be forgotten and I want no burial or cremation I just want to die the way dust looks in sunlight, it’s there but no one stops to notice.

I don’t think I live in the denial of death but some days I live in the denial of life and I honestly don’t know what’s worse.

~ Khushi Gupta

#deadpoetsnet #i feel like dying #creative wriitng #excerpt from a story i'll never write #writersofindia #i wrote a thing #writeundertheinfluence #writeaway

[khhushi]

I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. To put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived- Neil perry in dead poets society.

This is it, found my motto of life :)

#quotation

[khhushi]

[khhushi]

Still

Another year is coming to an end and nothing has really changed, we’re still anxiety driven and we’re still the socially awkward people trying to look beyond the mask.

We’re still looking for courage in the eyes of the sick and we’re still calling the truly courageous sick.

We’re still watching superhero movies knowing fully well we can’t be saved and we’re still looking for a superhero in every man on the podium.

We’re still fighting a disease we seem to know nothing about and are still blindly hoping that it won’t kill us all.

We’re still looking forward to the sunlight to make us whole again and we’re still looking at the moon to compare our flaws with.

We’re still looking for love in dark dingy corridors of hate and are still in pursuit of a happiness we ourselves are unable to define.

We’re still hating every bit of today and we’re still hoping for a better tomorrow. We’re still telling each other to love ourselves And we’re still in love with nothing bigger than self.

We’re still applauding mediocrity and are still ignoring most of what’s truly genius. We’re still remembering the ones that left and we’re still ignoring the ones they did leave behind.

We’re still trodding the path of the dead and we’re still trying to move on.

Another year is coming to an end and I hope the pretentious ignorance of pain will give way to something happy.

~ Khushi Gupta

#writeundertheinfluence #excerpt from a story i'll never write #i wrote a thing #writeaway #poems on life #female poets #poets on poetry #my writing #writing #writersofindia #writer problems #writingundertheinfluence

[khhushi]

Grateful

Is my life bad because it isn’t what I wanted it to be? No.

I’m not where I thought I’ll be 2 years ago , but I’m proud of what I became, in what came in the last 2 years, I broke down and built myself up , I need to remind myself that.

It’s easy to forget the privilege while focusing on the plight, for today I have good friends who held my hand through it all, friends who care enough to let me vent, I have my parents, alive and well. I’ll end up somewhere, maybe not exactly where I planned but somewhere which I with my own hands shall make my home.

Will it matter to anyone, what You do? Yes.

Just because something you do doesn’t create a magnitude of change it doesn’t mean that the change doesn’t have multitudes to you.

But what if I lose, or worse lose somebody else? I don’t know.

As my father coughs onto a handkerchief I cannot touch, I realise that I don’t remember the last time I hugged him, all I want today is to hug my father, tell him I love him and kiss my mother on her beautiful forehead and hold my sister till she feels secure and tell my friends how important they are to me because they truly are.

And before my heart turns to misery from mirth, today I want to feel something more, today I want to be grateful and today I am.

~ Khushi Gupta

#my writing #writeundertheinfluence #excerpt from a story i'll never write #writers on tumblr #writers #writeaway #writing #gratitude #take me home

[khhushi]

Cunt

This perpetual confusion I have as I trod the path of life in this weird time for what I feel, is so mind numbing.

All I care of, is my future. I’m sorry but that’s where life has brought me to, this place of darkness where the light of empathy for my fellow humans is just unable to reach.

I see people in pain everyday and I see it with a small pang in my tiny bottomless heart and then I move on.

I close the doors of their pain so it doesn’t enter mine and I move forward wondering what future has to offer knowing fully well that there might be a larger chance that there is none.

I don’t know anymore what’s right or wrong, I don’t know if I’m an enabler or the destroyer and if I do figure out what I am I don’t really think I’ll be on the right side of history if there is something I can call right.

As the pyres burn in front of my eyes, I crave a happier future for me and I don’t know if that’s a defence mechanism or just what I have turned out to be.

I see the death in the air around me and I constantly choose to ignore it because I’m a selfish little cunt.

That’s it, that’s all I am today a selfish little cunt.

~ Khushi Gupta

#writeundertheinfluence #my writing #excerpt from a story i'll never write #writers on tumblr #writeaway #writersofindia

[khhushi]

Is it ?

Is it fitting to say that no matter how much i smile the thing that lingers at the pit of my stomach is curiosity which enables fear and then anxiety, I don’t know who I am anymore or who I was once but I want to know who I will be.

Is that a stupid thing to ask?

Is it okay that on most days I feel so suffocated in my surroundings and on the other the same thing gives me comfort. I want to run away but I want to feel at home.

Is that normal?

I want to be the greatest version of me yet on most days I won’t get out of bed. I want to be brave yet I want someone to hold me when I cry. I want to be powerful but not by suppressing my vulnerabilities.

Is that even possible?

I want to be heard, yet on most days my voice quivers to speak. I want to be seen yet the only attention I get is the one I don’t need. I want to be loved yet all I get is guilt. I want to ask the questions but I don’t know if it’s fine.

Is it?

~ Khushi Gupta

#writeundertheinfluence #writers on tumblr #writeaway #my writing #writers #excerpt from a story i'll never write #written #late night thoughts #literature #books #writing

[khhushi]

Forgotten places.