Hangovers

Not all hangovers cause a headache.
Not all hangovers last a few hours.
Not all are a consequence of drinks and debauchery.

Some stay with you for days, some last months. And you could be completely off alcohol, I bet.
I experience this other category of hangovers often.
And only people like me who wear their heart like pride on their sleeve, who scream when happy and howl when sad,
who obsess equally over a lost nose ring as they would over a lost love, would know what I mean.

Sunaina, I suspect you’re like that too.

No black coffee can cure a hangover caused by long conversations you’ve had with someone without really speaking to them. Or interactions that are beyond words and other such restrictions.
A drop of lime wont cut the hangover of a lingering smell.
There are song hangovers, author hangovers.
A line you’ve read in a book, phrases and words that will keep playing in your mind, cause some.
Trips to the mountains.
Accidentally discovered lanes.
Rainy days.

My longest ever is all thanks to Clint Eastwood in the Bridges of Madison County.
And don’t even think of offering a cure.

Talk to the stars.

Tell your story to a beetle when it rains. Exchange few words with an aged book. Chat up with a street dog. Gossip with a gold fish. Talk to froth before you blow it off. Share jokes with a bubble. Whisper to a tree trunk. Talk to a lonesome dew drop. Chat up with a butterfly. Speak to a creeper. Talk to the mike. Say ta to sign boards. Make conversations with old photographs. Have a word with those long letters. Call out to the walls. Talk to your playing cards. Argue with a tough question paper. Discuss life with God. Talk to the ceiling in the middle of the night. Reason out with a fat bill. Get in touch with the wanton wind. Complain to a shirt stain. Utter something to a blank screen. Fight with a videogame. Mutter something to a firefly, rain, and to your rag doll. Talk to an old wound.

I'd like to

Travel and touch every wild flower ever grown

Learn to say ‘no’

Be fit

Learn to read and write in Urdu

Teach children in the mountains

Bungee jump

Stop trying to please everyone

A house atop a very tall building and enjoy the rain hitting against my windows. Own one in the mountains with bougainvilleas for company.

Read as many books and then open a book cum tea hut with those books and some fine tea. Then have long and heady conversations about authors of those books and passages from those books with complete strangers

Go without feeling unhappy or depressed or low for a month at a stretch

Visit the bridges in Iowa

Send mother father on a luxury holiday

Be a professional actor

Enjoy rice without guilt

Taste every brand of beer in the world and read up all the literature available on whiskeys

Write a few books

Write handwritten notes or letters to people I have wronged

Write handwritten letters or notes to people who have wronged me

Write a handwritten letter to my father

Buy my mother a house she always yearned for

Put photographs in order, preferably in a black scrap book and give titles

Learn to pull back

Own the best fragrances in the world

Forget

Let go

Resume Hindustani classical classes

Have a massive library at home

Soak in each and every piece, word, anything ever written by Gulzar

Read all the books ever written on magical realism

Figure out how I’m so good at making some of my dearest people uncomfortable just by being around. Change that

Attend a ‘mushaira’

Shoot a documentary on women living in brothels

Do a Delhi to Rishikesh on foot

A cycle ride with someone in the fields

Participate in a marathon every year

Own a telescope

Watch Ijazzat once every month till I die

Raise a child

Do a Greece, Morocco, Venice

Stop searching for happiness outside

Control my anger

Fall irreparably in love with someone, fall like I’ve never been hurt

Accept that mother father will eventually grow old

Find a guru

Read out my favourite passages to the one I will love enough to share them with

Hold hands

Make a film

Be comfortable with the way I look

Stop waiting

Name someone’s child

Say final good byes to a few people

Accept the unrequited

Have stimulating conversations during sunset

Raise plants

Take a guilt free long holiday from work

Get to know mother’s secrets and not judge her

Breed horses

Visit Kashmir

Live in Northeast

Stop making the same mistakes

Recognize patterns

Detox for a month, no drinking, no lying, no escaping, no outside food, no anger, no flirting, no nothing

Make my mentors proud

Settle down mentally and emotionally, not literally and socially

Gift my Dad the best scotch whiskeys in the world

Go fishing

Say no to denial

Say no to defense mechanism

Get another tattoo

Pray for my sisters

Know where to stop

Have zero debt

Keep increasing my collection of coasters, matchboxes, piggy banks

Learn pottery

Learn a craft and then pass it on

Pay attention to directions

Save money

See a past life therapist

Trek more

Seriously work on being a good listener

Remember that distance breeds strength

Stop looking for warmth

Stop making a mess of relationships

Commit

Between me and the mountains.

From the thirteenth floor of my cold, figuratively and metaphorically speaking, office, I can see the mountains. Between them and me lie a few skyscrapers, a big slum, people going about town, trees and small jungles, hoardings and poles. And also, a 9 to no-time-to-return-home job, unsigned leave applications, responsibility and obligations, limitations, house rents and emis, city life, dreams and ambitions, literal distance, car that is not serviced, commitments, effort, permissions that ought to be taken, planning and pursuing. Someday I will cross it all. And get there.

I dig

ferns, little labradors, coasters, matchboxes, white flowers, lady bugs, turtles, bulky beer mugs, tea and balconies, photo-frames, creepers, swings, rugs, silver ashtrays, yellow paper, big watch dials, clocks, reading glasses, a bunch of keys, piggy banks, red threads, framed mirrors, low tables, strings, footpaths, railings, railway station benches, white sheets, curtains, bookmarks, smell of varnish, glass bottles, envelopes, brown paper, typewriters, fresh towels, wet pebbles, well sharpened pencils, wet eyes, earthen pots, stairs, straw and hay stacks, toe rings, big windows, sand, mud after rain, caps on boys, calves and collar bones, cycle rides, wanton dupattas, interesting strangers, train journeys, snails and gumboots, hugs, gardens, running tracks, cobble stone streets, incense, gray, cold floors, clefts, parapets, birds, quilts, lazy afternoons, early mornings.

Why must the degree vary?

When you’re in a new city, how do you decide who’s more of a stranger?
The one who randomly approached you somewhere or the one who initiated a conversation at work?
Come to think of it, are both not in the same category?
Why then do you believe and trust someone who meets you in familiar surroundings, say your workplace, or at a friend’s party but be suspicious and wary of the one who approaches you at a coffee shop or a bar?
How come the one who approaches you on the street or a Barista is more of a stranger than the one who showed interest in you at work?
Is it not a possibility that the stranger you trusted because the surroundings were familiar betrays you as opposed to the other one who may be totally harmless.
In a new city, how do you decide who is more of a stranger.
Is everyone not one?

Both

We’re caught between discipline and debauchery.

The quest to choose either is eternal; the rate of success, almost zero. Both are equally tempting. The jogging track pulls you and so does the nearest watering hole. Between the post-run high and the post-drink high, how do you tell the degree of which high is higher? You’re forever falling from grace when temptation calls and at the same constantly making an effort to keep control. Suppression is just as common as the tendency to ‘say-it-all, do-it-all, go-with-the-flow’. One-night stands reluctantly co-exist with the search for true love. Hearts that curl up with fear of commitment also nurse the desire to commit and surrender to someone like they did in old love stories. Stability and wanderlust are both desirable. Smoke filled late hours of the night and fog full early mornings, how do you ever make a choice?