Tag: positive affirmations

Valentine’s

Last Friday, I wanted to write about love. But I had just moved into a new apartment, so the natural scramble to unbox my journal ensued. (Pen and paper? Yes, I’m old school.). I found it after going through five boxes and as I sat down on my chaise by the window, my gaze caressed the New Yorker building. “This is love too!”, I’d thought. So I got carried away into what became my last post. But oh well, let’s talk about the “love” love.

The song “आपा फेर मिलांगे” or “Apa fer Milaangey” has been all over social media lately. I’m not the one to keep up with the trends but recently a friend posted a reel with the song in the background, and that’s when it caught my eyes and ears. I looked it up on Spotify and I was not disappointed. I understand the language Punjabi just enough to get the “vibe” of the song and it’s different. It’s probably autotuned like every other song these days, but it does not seem “autotuned” right away, if you know what I mean. It almost sounds like a dude wrote a song for his girl and recorded it in his basement, and I mean it in a good way! Because that’s rare now, and that taps into something few songs do.

If you’re a Hindi/ Punjabi speaker, or just love to explore music from all over the world like me 🙂

One example is “Hey there Delilah” and I tried to think why these songs make me feel the way they do. Is it because they’re happy and sad and hopeful and hopeless at the same time? So my brain is basically scrambled, and I don’t know what to feel? Does it take me back to a specific time or a specific someone? I don’t think it’s either. Maybe the answer is it’s just heartfelt and simple. No frills, no bells, no whistles – just a slice of someone’s life; a love that was so great it was bigger than the people in it. So it got immortalized in the song, and continues to bring comfort to who it touches.

It’s been a minute I were in love, well seven years. And I only realized it recently. For even when I might have dated after, and even when they might have been long-term monogamous committed relationships, I was never “in love”. How is this possible! What is even love! Maybe I’ll think about that another time. But I’m glad I was in love once upon a time. I strongly recommend falling in love to everyone. 🙂

It was young love, and the best kind. Maybe because it was so innocent. Even though I was just seventeen, I knew I could fight every human on the planet for this man. And by the way, when you’re sixteen, you most likely pick the wrong man. But that does not even matter, you move on. I think love is the most selfless and the most selfish emotion. On one hand I would give my life for this person in a heartbeat, and on the other hand, I would not want to share them with anyone (and I don’t mean it in an unhealthy way!).

I remember there was always an “us” in every decision, even when we were nineteen and making plans for when we would be thirty five. Those make-believe scenarios from future family dinners, or family vacations, or imaginary kids. I remember dressing up in the morning for college and rushing back in to swap my red scarf with blue because he liked it on me. He was a priority even with all the craziness around, and I knew if the world was ending tomorrow, and if I could save only one person, that would be him, even though it meant I’d have to walk through hellfire for the next eternity. Every bone in my body, and every inch of my skin was in love with this human. Now looking back at it as I’m older and wiser, in all reality, it was probably the most incompatible match of everyone I’ve ever dated, but when you fall for someone, you just do. There is no rhyme or reason. I was all in, heart, body, and soul and I gave it everything I had. And maybe that’s why love has been so hard to come by again. It’s not like you get a set quota of love to spend in life, but when you see something so pure and great like that die, you start holding back. So maybe it’s only heart the next time or only soul or only body. And sometimes when muscle memory kicks in nudging you to dive in, you spend too long sitting on the fence. Maybe you overcome that eventually, maybe you don’t.

But if you’re reading this today from your fence, I hope you find the courage to make the leap one more time. One more time is ALL you need in this lifetime. Belated Happy Valentine’s Day!

This playlist is collaborative, add your faves 🙂

Through the glass window…

Last Friday, even though it was just me in my solitude (मैं और मेरी तन्हाई…cringe yet?), I struggled to acknowledge, “I did it.” It feels like the moment these words leave my mouth and enter the universe, they cease to exist in the realm of reality; that is, if they were true in the first place. But I did it! And as scared and as vulnerable as I feel saying that, I almost force myself to take a second and breathe it in…and I just cannot.

I write this from my very tiny NYC apartment. It took everything to get here. I have been dreaming about this for 16 years, or maybe more. What I feel right now is what I felt looking at “Starry Nights” at MoMA in December 2023. Art critics who say it’s overrated can take a walk!

I saw Gogh’s paintings for the first time in my “General Knowledge” book in maybe fifth grade, and the groovy brush strokes were almost like an electromagnetic field pulling me in. And I remember wanting to share it with my friends but no one seemed to care. They don’t “get it”, the 10-year-old me had concluded. And it was only the beginning of many things my friends wouldn’t “get” and I would feel completely out of place and time growing up. (And they would all turn out to be WAY cooler than I’d ever be!). So I buried myself in books, and literature, and art. And as a sixteen-year-old, I had thought about what it would feel like to look at “Starry Nights” in real life! So I wanted to apply to colleges in the US based on everything I’d heard, read, and seen on TV, and that idea would immediately get shot down.

Little did I know I would stand in front of “Starry Nights” amongst a supercharged throng at MoMA in a couple decades. And I would stare at it with every strength my eyelids could muster, and I’d just fail to see it because my eyes would just be flooded with tears. “Starry Nights” would always be the embodiment of an impossible dream for me.

For someone who grew up poor, dreams do feel like a carnal sin. You learn very early on to lull it down and shove it deep under your skin. You learn to talk about everything else over time, even your deepest trauma. But you never talk about your “hopes and dreams”. Even today as I sit by the window in awe living one of my many dreams, it feels like an out-of-body experience. It must be a mistake, a glitch in the matrix, I’d wake up tomorrow and this would cease to exist…I won’t get my work visa approved and will need to leave next year anyway, so what’s the point, this is all fleeting!

Last Friday, when I wrote this down, I was surrounded by boxes that needed unboxing, and I was already doomsday planning laying on my back on my mattress on the floor, head tilted backward and staring at an upside-down Empire State Building. I don’t know how long this is supposed to last, but this is life for now. And like every other time I know I’ll see this through okay. But tonight I feel like the six-year-old girl peeping into the Barbie store pining for dolls she knows she cannot have.