Bloody Mary Days

It was the summer of 2006, where after my 10^th board exams I had started looking out for fun-to-do activities to keep myself busy till I get my results, and also collected newspaper articles related to careers and colleges, keeping a tap on everything, in order to not to be left behind.

And one hot midsummer morning, the birds chirped in the sense that I was alive. Sipping tea as a part of my daily routine, I opened the events and activity section of Bombay Times and found the perfect interest. It was a spot on and a pretty legit activity that would also spare my loved ones from my daily drama! Here, I could puke out all of my creativity, energy and loudness in it. It was theatre! What better than that? After a lot of “discussion”, in my terms, fights, tantrums and argument, and the pampered child that I am, my parents agreed on for me to go ahead with my unexplored hobby and discover the attention seeker in me. After enrolling, the self-conscious, yet, control freak me, left and walked down to a road that I was eagerly waiting to discover.

THEATRE. The very word excites me to an extent where I feel like the Big Bad Wolf from the cartoon Red Hot Riding Hood, where the wolf acts crazy when he looks at a cabaret dancer and starts to whistle. That’s what it brought out of me. Every day at the workshop was amazing, I always wanted to meet new people, and when I did, I was like a fish out of the bowl and straight into a lake! It was a crazy feeling of newness, and I might have even been tagged as a wannabe grow up behind my back by all the graduates, high school freshers, and professionals. There were just probably three other girls, just finished school, like the 16 year old me and were yet beyond my understanding and I never liked to hang out with them. However, I loved the others who were planning about their life, already in college and it was amazing to hear them talk about their life and more.

And between and apart from my theatre workshop life and fun home life, I had someone with me. You would tag that someone as a boyfriend, a puppy love moment, yes, maybe. But it was Love for sure. For the days we were together felt like a trance, and where I used to lie at home saying I am meeting school friends or theatre friends, but actually go out with him and do the fun stuff that I have had only been heard of. They are termed as DATES. And they were fun, yes. Dinners, Lunch, movies, walking, coffee, mocktails and pecks, and above all the complete shyness of holding hands that, today, in my awesome generation is stupid, the hands are meant for doing something naughtier.

But the days had to come to an end, not for my age or his, not for our generation, not for anyone, but because of the purest and universal fact that Life is a Bitch more than once in a life time, and that’s how it rolls. For what fate had for me, was much worse in my head and triple times worse for his family when he departed in the most cunning manner the universe could do. While I waited at our secret restaurant full of fun and puppy love romance, he was being dragged on to a stretcher in a hospital and his soul wandered away in the midst of everything. I was left, stranded. I was left, forever.

And yet, if that wasn’t enough, where I had no place to hide after my course had ended, and cry under the blanket at night not understanding what to do and where to do, life threw another hardball at me by declaring my failure in the 10^th grade; which is quite life threatening, shameful and disgraceful for a child to have been done in the eyes of the society. Because, it was my fault that I hadn’t studied, but reality is that I was unable to understand and failed to digest the language Marathi that I awfully sucked at, and mother effing bull shitted in the exam.

So two things had hit me; a love affair that ended way before it took a flight to the stars and a helpless start to a career. The crying of things over situations overlapped, because I didn’t know why was I crying? Tears just flowed down anytime. The thought of drowning made me feel better. So basically, I was depressed. I had disconnected from the world, including my best friend who was shattered and shocked that I had failed and might not be a part of the college life we had planned and dreamt of. I could sink in with my thoughts and get into a state of overwhelming trance where I couldn’t even hear anybody talk to me until they shook me.

While all the children of my age were running around for admissions in high school, I on the other hand was battling with myself. Mentally I was destroyed and my heart felt choked. And like they say, when you are not well mentally, the body starts to get affected too. And there came my allergies, low blood pressure along with more crying and other hormonal disorders. I had stopped reacting to people, used to get into a zone where I started to forget things, and remembering people or memories were like a puzzle to me. The soft spot had been hit, and I was in need of human aid and not medication. I had to be taken out of this before it hit me way deeper.

Family will always stand by you, no matter what. And they stepped in, took charge of the sulking me. My father encouraged me to join a workshop again, to take my inner frustration through my art. He pushed me to do something productive, apart from learning the language that I had failed in, rather, the language because of which I was pulled down in my career front.

From the next day onwards, like a light in my life, where at a point where yesterday my self-esteem and self-confidence were at the scale of -5, transferred to +10 in a week’s time. Meeting new people was my drug. Painting was my drug. And apart from getting used to beer, going out and traveling was my drug. In the process, the bug in my heart had discovered a new addiction, finding my discontinued and incomplete love in other guys that I meet.

Well, today, where I stand and for what I have done in my life, isn’t something great to talk about or brag about, but all I know is that, along with the Martinis, Draught pitcher Beers or commercialized Beer Brands, Cocktails, Gins, Vodkas, Old Monk, and Sangrias…I have also tasted Life in every possible way I can.

I cherish the depressing as well as the unexpressed happy moments that I have had. And if you ever think of taking a revenge from life, don’t. Just do better and the best for yourself. The day you’re Happy, your world will be happy for you, and no body, no fucking body, would say anything, ever, to you. And love will always be found or lost, for its love. Love knows where it wants to go.