Summer Girl-Part IV

Kabir

Silence greeted my confession. I was painfully aware of Paridhi sitting on the other side of the door. They years had been kind to Paridhi. The aloof, slightly haughty preteen had turned out to be surprisingly empathetic. In spite of his harsh monosyllabic reply to her frantic questions, he could still feel her sitting on the other side of the door awaiting an explanation.

Explanation. Did he have it in himself to put words to his thoughts? Thoughts that have been plaguing him for years now.

As far back as he could remember, he had been slightly envious of Paridhi. She has always seemed so self sufficient in her own little world. Even though Anushka, Paridhi and he spent the majority of their childhoods with each other, it had always been him and Anushka glued together and Paridhi lurking in the sidelines. One would have thought that that would have been a chip on his and Anushka's shoulders. After all, children often have the propensity to be cruel and exclusionary. And it was to a certain extent. However, it did not stop at that. He and Anushka, within their own little clique had been surprisingly unkind to Paridhi. He had always suspected that while his own feelings towards Paridhi had consistently been that of mild envy coupled with substantial fascination, Anushka had been outright jealous. Paridhi did not help her case either. Whenever the trio had spent time together, he and Anushka engrossed in some make believe world of their own, Paridhi had sat at a distance with her nose buried in a book eying them with mild contempt if not outright disdain.

In retrospect, he could see now that there was also a lot of childish longing that had suffused her features then. But he and Anushka had been blind to any such possibility then. 

And so it had happened that cheerful, garrulous, beautiful, popular Anushka ably assisted by a more than willing Kabir had made it her life's mission to be spiteful towards Paridhi. It was spite that was not easily discoverable, spite that was never at the forefront, spite that was doused in layers of sugary sweet pretension, spite that coloured all their interactions with Paridhi so much so that there came a point when even looking at Paridhi became a cause for discomfort for him.

Paridhi had always known the dynamics of the group and had mastered the art of making herself scarce while always being ostensibly present as a part of the group. It would have been much easier for her to completely dissociate herself from them in order to seek more accepting playmates, but, even then Paridhi had been as tenacious as she is now. For, you see, Paridhi was still sitting on the other side of the door waiting for him to speak.

The Pursuit of Happiness

[This is one big horrid rant. The last few weeks and the months preceding that have probably been the toughest in my 20 year old life and the end is nowhere in sight. Crippled by a completely inability to right, I have not posted anything on this blog for months. Today, even though all I have managed is a rant, I am eternally thankful for the universe for allowing me to put together more than two sentences.]

One of the most common adages about happiness is that it is a choice. And maybe it is. Why, then, do we so often make decisions which seem right but do not end in happiness? Decisions are supposed to be an end in themselves-you evaluate available options and opt for the one that seems the most suitable, right? Why then does dealing with decisions taken often becomes more difficult than the decision itself? To make things worse, the age in which one needs to take big life altering decisions seems to be becoming younger and younger. My parents made that choice at 24, I am making it at 20. Same difference? Not really. Imagine how you were at 16 as compared to 20. Vastly different, right?

Psychologists say that my generation is about as unhappy as one can be. Extremely high expectations of oneself as well as of the world coupled with the belief that all of us are special and hence deserve special things to happen to us are supposedly to blame. The new parenting hack seems to be the ability to convey to one's child that while they made be great and capable and should aspire for good things in life, they are NOT special. Good things are not going to happen to them always. Heck, good things happening in life is probably a rarity. Life is not meant to be easy and will never be. But must it be always so hard?

The ability to take tough decisions in life is something that has been venerated by society since times immemorial. But taking a decision is only the tip of the iceberg, and that is where I am standing right now. Decisions. Decisions. A decision that I have taken to supposedly prevent unhappiness later in life is making me about as miserable as I can be in the present thus begging the question, is it really worth it? Is it worth pledging the present to stave of unhappiness in the future? As kids, we are often taught that the future is more important than the present, that the future is something that one needs to continuously plan for. But is it worth sacrificing the present for? 

I am not a big fan of the concept of living everyday like it is the last day of one's life, myself, for the simple reason that I don't think it is possible if you reasonably belief that the prospect of existence of tomorrow is a certainty. But the thought that haunts me day and night these days is that one day the promise of a future might be taken away from  me and then I will have nothing to show for myself.