It’s Father’s Day. And my TLs, both on FB and Twitter have been flooded with thoughts, wishes and expressions of love. But how do I tell my father what he means. We are not part of that section that celebrates days and anniversaries, real and imagined. We belong to that section that quietly goes about its work, save for a quick phone call on a birthday or anniversary. We don’t tell each other how much we care. It is assumed. It is a given. I don’t quite know how else to be. I haven’t spoken to my father today. I haven’t told him how much he means to me, not because I don’t care, but because saying it is too difficult.

That said, today is perhaps as good a day as any other to remember the childhood years when Appa was everything. When Amma was the villain of the piece and Appa was the superhero. My earliest memories of my father involve talking about everything under the sun. They involve lying down in the terrace, on a beautiful starry night and learning to identify the stars. I remember learning to recognise Venus, the Pole Star and Ursa Major. I remember finding the Pleiades somewhere in the distance and trying to understand what they mean. I remember trying, and failing to distinguish between Sirius and some other distant star in the galaxy. Much later, I remember the discussions around the meaning of life. On whether the scriptures really spoke the truth. Whether there was really some such thing as the absolute truth. I will never forget what my father told me that day. That truth is always relative. That reality is often a grey area between the black and the white. That every single thing, every single human, even the gods are some shade of grey. That between the black and the white lie a million shades of grey, each unique, each special.

A second, more tangible memory of my childhood years is the way he engaged with me. I remember the games we played. I never had dolls and kitchen sets and makeup kits. Instead, he bought me books and crayons and brushes. He bought me pens and notebooks. He played hangman and word building when children my age were playing car racing games. He taught me to teach myself, to learn, to grasp and to understand. The greatest gift I have ever received from him is the ability to learn something out of my own volition. He taught me to enjoy the written word, to let my mind wander, far into mythical and fictional worlds, to explore and to travel into the deepest recesses of my heart. He taught me that failure is not just acceptable, but actually encouraged. He taught me that unless you make an attempt, you will never learn. And for this, I love him.

To this day, he engages me in ways nobody else quite can. In his mind, I am still his 3-year old who doesn’t quite understand what she wants. Yet, he lets me be. Lets me make my mistakes. He lets me fall so that I can pick myself up and emerge stronger from the experience. And most importantly, he has never once said I cannot do something I truly want to because I’m a girl. And for that, he’s the best father one can ask for.

I wasn’t planning to write today. I wanted to pick up a book and read, until I finished at least a couple to justify the reason for my leave. But I happened on Lakshmi’s post detailing seven random things about her. It’s so much fun to read, and she insists it’s revelatory as well. So let me try.

1. I used to be an extrovert. The kind who forever seeks out human company. The kind who can’t be alone with herself. Over the past decade, that’s changed, slowly but surely. Now, I no longer crave company the way I used to. Of course, I continue to socialise, meet people, go shopping and the like. But, I am no longer an extrovert. I call myself a selective extrovert. Perhaps the term ambivert will suit me better.
2. I am a compulsive reader. I read anything from bus tickets, to newspaper clippings, to literature that comes packed with medicines. If something is written, I’ll read it. I’ve always been this way, but over the years, I have also begun to try reading something every day as a deliberate step. Books, articles, poems, blogposts…nothing is off limits.
3. If someone hurts me, I pretend to move on and forget. The truth, however, is quite different. I tend to hold on to the hurt. I become resentful of the person. I realise it’s not good for me, but the hurt me has a great difficulty in forgetting. I may even forgive, but I tend not to forget. And to certainly never trust that person again. Like a broken glass that can never be mended.
4. I have an innate curiosity about things that makes me need to know. For me, ignorance is not bliss. If I don’t know something, I’ll make an effort to find out. Not knowing something that directly affects me or my life is just not acceptable. This could be the side effects of a medicine, the workings of a light bulb…anything really…
5. I don’t particularly crave for children. I don’t have any, and it doesn’t trouble me. Of course, I’d love to have them if I can. But, if I can’t, my life wouldn’t collapse. It annoys me, nay, makes me furious when people say motherhood makes a woman complete. I’m complete in myself, thank you very much!
6. Art makes me emotional. I can’t draw or paint or sculpt. I’m not remotely artistic. My creativity is purely verbal. But engaging with art in its myriad forms makes me feel things I can’t quite explain. Given a chance, I’d spend the rest of my life in art galleries. Not the techniques, not the theory, but art itself makes me crave for more.
7. Friendships are sacred to me. I may not speak to my friends on a daily basis, or engage with them regularly. But, if they really need me, I’d drop everything and run. I have a handful of friends I truly care for and I wouldn’t give them up for anything in the world.

Phew! That was hard… So, what are the random things about you that people don’t know? Go on…do share!

I need to say this. Love is not what holds you back. It’s what sets you free. Far too many people, young and old alike, confuse possessiveness for love. If someone tells you not to do something or go somewhere because they can’t bear to be away from you, that’s not love. That’s the need for you. And need is certainly not love.

Over the past few days, one particular post on Facebook has caught my attention. A “love story” where the boy calls the girl two days before she is scheduled to leave for higher studies abroad and tells her not to go. He tells her that he can’t live without her and she should stay back in India for him. And I see too many young men and women share and re-share this story as an example of “true love”.

Let me tell you this, true love would let you pursue those dreams. True love would strive to help you get what your heart truly desires. If someone tells you not to do something because they don’t want you to be away, it’s not love. That’s selfishness. They don’t love you. They love what you do for them and how you treat them. And that’s not true love.

I’ve never understood the term “falling in love”. How can something what trips you up and makes you fall be a good thing? Love should elevate. It should empower. It should make you want to stay by setting you free. As the saying goes, let it go. If it comes back, it’s yours. Otherwise, it never was.  

I’ve always said that the new year is a tad overrated. That said, a new year is an opportunity. It’s a chance that we get, year on year, to start over on a fresh page, leaving the mistakes of the previous year behind. It’s a chance to look ahead, to hope for a better future. After all, what’s life without hope?

Like everyone else, I too have a bucket list. Many elements of this list have stayed on for years, even decades now. Some have been struck off to be replaced with other things. But these are not resolutions to be broken by the end of January. These are things that change with time, with baby steps, taken one step at a time. These are little drops that will one day form an ocean.

First on my list, is to forgive myself my shortcomings a bit more easily. I am perhaps my own worst critic. There are days when I look around me and see a messy house, an unmade bed and dirty dishes and curse myself for being worthless, constantly telling myself that I’m no match for others who manage to keep a spotless house. This year, I’d like to be a little kinder to myself and try not to feel inadequate all the time. 

The next on my list is to take some time off for myself every week. To start doing what I love to do: write. To spend time with my thoughts and words, because they’re important to me. 

And finally, to tolerate crap a little less. To speak my mind without being rude. To be strong without appearing insulting. This is perhaps the most difficult of my tasks. But I’d like to try. 

What’s on your bucket list?

I’ve been struggling to verbalise what I feel since my city started sinking on the 1st of December. It’s taken me 13 days to finally sit down and attempt to put these thoughts into words. Forgive me if I’m not entirely coherent, for these past days have been extraordinary in more ways than one.

The first day of December will remain forever etched in my mind. Only a stroke of incredibly good luck got me out of office and back to my parents’ home that evening. Things were still looking manageable when I got home around 6 that evening. Little did I know that the next three days would be a roller coaster of emotions. Little did I realise that this city that I so love would sink in ways that none of us ever imagined it would. Even when the power went off at 8 that night, I only grumbled a bit about the inconvenience caused, never realising that parts of my city were already under water. Only later that evening when I started seeing tweets about people stranded on their way home did I realise that this wasn’t going to end just yet. I remember being amazed at the generosity of common people like you and me, who threw their homes open to complete strangers stranded in the rains, offering them food, wifi and a place to sleep. I didn’t know then that this was only the beginning.

For the next three days, cut off from the rest of the world, with no power or network, I didn’t quite know what was happening. The road before the house was waist deep in water. Inner roads were flooded till the neck. Back home, I managed to ascertain that S and the FIL were fine but had no power or network either. I heard from friends, neighbours and well-wishers that Nanganallur was fine and with very little flooding. I heaved a sigh of relief. I got my parents out to the safety of my aunt’s house and we all treated it like a quirk of fate that brought the family together under a single roof after all these years. Even when my cousin called on the evening of Wednesday in panic asking if we needed to be rescued, we put it down to unnecessary panic. We didn’t know that people were indeed being rescued by helicopters in many parts of the city.

It’s only when I got reconnected to the Internet on Friday afternoon did I come to realise the magnitude of the tragedy. I was seeing tweets for help, cries of distress, common citizens rally together to hold afloat a sinking city. And by then, the worst was already over. As I progressively got back to civilisation, I was struck. Struck by random strangers answering calls for help. People in other cities reaching out to volunteers and the rescue forces on the ground to provide information. I saw common people come together and cook meals for the displaced. I saw places of worship throw their doors open to everyone and shelter them for the days to come. What I saw filled my heart with an unspeakable gratitude for the goodness innate in people. I personally sent out an appeal for rescue of a trapped friend that was retweeted and shared about 100 times. It warms my heart that help reached less than three hours after the first appeal went out on Twitter. Used as I am to seeing bitterness and rancour, outrage and politics, I was surprised that my Twitter feed was almost entirely filled with tweets asking for or offering help. That is still the case, 13 days after the tragedy. I see people still tweet about rehabilitation, relief, clean-up and the like.

Born and raised in Chennai, I always associated my hometown with a distinct lack of respect for the other. Friends hailing from places like Coimbatore, including and especially S, have never failed to point out that Chennaiites lack basic manners. But in the aftermath of the floods, I realise that a sea of humanity still exists in this city. Ten years later, the death toll and the flooding will become a statistic, but those who helped me, my family and friends will forever remain etched in my memory. I may not remember the day the roads of my city turned into an ocean, but I will always remember random strangers who offered help unsolicited, asked after my well-being, and ensured my family and friends were safe.

Maybe it required a wall of water to turn this selfish, disrespecting mass of people into something we are all proud of. They say disaster brings out the worst in people. But, for me, this disaster has indeed brought out the best of Chennai. May you always remain this way, my beloved city.