The Leftover

Since you left me, I know I have lost myself.

I have lost that self that was sure about the return. I believed everything returns; the good and the bad, the happiness and the sorrow. Now, I have stopped believing in the phenomenon of 'give and receive'.

How could you not call me back when you had promised you would?

How could I not receive my love back what I had given you unconditionally?

How could I not…?

Your voice still gives a jolt to my heart. I know you are nowhere there, except inside the players I have captured your voice in, expect in the pictures that you are trapped in, except in the words that I have locked you in, except in the memories that I couldn’t block you in. 

I know you are nowhere around but you haunt me. You have become that ghoul I always fear. I feared your presence and how horrifying it is, I fear your absence as well. 

Days passed, months flew by and years did the same but you haunt me still today. 

Acceptance is surreal. I have moved on. I am in a happy place, yet the moment you left haunts me. I fear to lose again. I have grown anxious. I miss my independent self that feared nothing; nothing at all. Even your absence didn’t matter then, then why does it matter now? 

I even fear to answer the rhetorical questions I ask. 

Was it that I didn’t love you?

Or, was it that I loved you so bad and never will be able to love again?

Or, is it I am madly in love now and fear what it actually is to lose someone you truly love? 

I chose to accept. I choose to accept. I will choose to accept. 

Albeit, there are traces of you that haunts me now and then. You creep inside me. 

I fear. 

I tremble. 

I feel lost. 

I feel I am no more myself; my independent self. 

I sometimes feel you are still around me. I am skeptical about the sight of that burning pyre. I feel I am sitting in an exam where I am being tested of my patience.

"How long can you resist my absence?"

You question me. 

I am being graded. 

I stayed. I stayed until I could. 

But then now let me go back to myself; that fluttering self which roamed around searching her alone time. I don’t like this anxiety. I am fearful of this anxious attachment. I am fearful of this ifs and buts. I am fearful to lose once again. And you are the reason for it. Stop judging my patience. Stop haunting me. 

With your loss, I lost a part of me. 

Rebirth of that part has made me whole again but sometimes I hate this anxious incarnation of me. I want to return to that avoidant self who loved everyone unconditionally then too but let them be on their own. Because I knew they would call me back. But you didn’t and that changed everything. 

Here again, I accept the leftover from your absence. 

The Untouched Nipples (Breaking the Bracket 1)

Painted on 25th May, 2018

Slithering into the bed, she thought of all the wild fantasies that she could imagine. She made sure her well-toned collar bone emitted the fragrance of mild sandalwood. She carefully removed her mascara making sure the smokiness of her eyes was intact for those were the route to the heaven.

A gush of rosiness surrounded her cheeks as soon as she imagined the tickles the blisters of her chest would feel.
She giggled.

She then looked at her recently manicured fingers and moved them to slowly untie her beautiful curly black hair.

‘A pure beauty’, she thought.

Slowly, her smooth pedicured feet started to dance the beats of her moan.
Her beloved fingers as slowly proceeded towards her full circular bosom to run around her untouched nipples.

"The secret of a woman's beauty
lies in her nipples.
Oops!
Her untouched nipples"

She muttered.

Pad Bank: Paving the path for menstrual taboo free society (Story of Transformation 41)

For the most beautiful creature

I am said, I question what’s

that beautiful to me?

For the most intelligent human

I am told, I question what

matters my being?

For I am lost.

For I am fearful

For I suffer and also differ.

Most importantly I bleed.

I bleed my heart out.

I bleed my soul out;

sometimes frequently,

sometimes infrequently.

At that moment, I hate my body.

I hate my soul.

I hate my beauty and hate my intellect too.

I long for a friend and that’s you;

my sanitary pad.

            A few days ago, I was asked to write some lines for that one material that is dear to me. As you can see it is none other than a sanitary pad. I just couldn’t find anything else that is so dear to me. I don’t like to explain the reason for it will be yet another cliché for some other person who might go through it. But, what I do know is everyone appreciates the role of a sanitary pad in any female’s life. However, this omnipresent problem is yet still an object of taboo. In certain societies of Nepal, women, especially schoolgirls, go through different challenges just because they are menstruating and there’s no availability of good sanitary pads.

Promisha Mishra, 27, an engineering student realized the same and has started working on this. Having gone through some rough years in school days during her menstrual cycle, she was thoughtful enough to think about other teenage girls going through the same problem.

In one of their causal coffee talks, she along with her friends started sharing their menstrual issues with each other. Some common norms during menstruation at their homes led them to think of what girls in rural areas might be going through. This informal talk turned into an informal research project which further showed the need to talk about menstruation and menstrual hygiene in some of the nearby villages.

            “We found that most of the government offices and school administration didn’t have any facility of sanitary pads. That made us think about how many girls might be missing their classes just because they don’t have any access to sanitary pads.” Mishra shared her story of how their attention focused towards working in the schools of Bara.

            They started approaching people and organizations through social media. Some of the NGOs like Prolaw, Sano Paila and some of their friends and local people were kind enough to lend them their supporting hands for their campaign ‘Pad Bank’. In coordination with Community Development Program, Local Ward Office and Nepal Rastirya Secondary School and some volunteers, they conducted their first workshop on menstrual hygiene and distributed sanitary pads in Bara.

                        Realizing the importance of sanitary pads and necessary medicines in schools for regular attendance of the students, after the workshop, the school principal and the ward president promised to make them available in the schools. Promisha and her team hope for similar kind of impact even in the coming days. However, the prevalence of the belief that disposal of sanitary pads leads to the barrenness in women has become a major challenge. Also, many people think it’s difficult for them to invest in such products. Meanwhile, owing to the government’s indifference, they have had to invest their energy in educating people about the importance of such products.

            Few months into the initiation, this campaign has already seen an impact. The team is now more enthusiastic to spread this to several other rural areas. For them, transformation is when the government will take menstrual hygiene also as one of its priorities and every government offices and schools will have menstrual products available for free. May small efforts like this turn into some really transformative network and some day we can see our country free of menstrual taboos.


(P.S. And with this story, I end my series 'Story of Transformation'. I will definitely be back, though. with my tits and bits of writing.)

         

Edifying Fascination of Death

Acrylic inspired from Dan Pearce
Painted on 24th March, 2018

I wonder how profound death can be. Looking at how it encroaches your wellbeing at the most uncertain time, I wonder how astounding it is. It feels like slowly I am falling in love with this unpredictability. I am growing a strong fascination for this sophistication. This love doesn't, in any way, mean a cumbersome challenge to death. 

Who am I?

A miniature. 

But this beauty has left me feeling vacant thousands of times. It has made me question my own existence every moment. This death has made me aware of what I really vouch for in my life. It is death that has made me realize how beautiful my life is. Its unpredictability is what makes me get out of my bed just to greet my love with a warm smile. It has made me realize how daunting it must be to live every day with the fear that you won't be able to touch your loved ones anymore. Let alone touch, you won't be able to see them. 

How you wish if there was no death you would go and ask for forgiveness that you didn't intentionally hurt her. How you wish if there was no death you would ask for one more day just to share how much you loved your partner. How you wish if there was no death you would thrive each moment to give happiness to your child. 

But then there comes death just to make you realize, "I am here, shower love with your presence."

Now, wouldn't you too fall in love with this profound death? 

Dear death,

I am falling for you. Will you be my one-sided love? 

It's a unique proposal I know but as much as I love you, I fear you too. I am in love with your invisibility as I am unsure what apocalypse you may come along with. However, until the day you won't reciprocate my love, I long to love my beloved.

Sherap Gyaltsen Lama: Walking the Forbidden Path (Story of Transformation 40)

Have you ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn’t have fallen in love with?

Umm… Quite a difficult place to imagine yourself in.

However, it’s also true that you find love in a hopeless place. And as Allan Dare Pearce says, “Having something forbidden is exciting, don’t you agree?”

Sometimes love is not a person, but a road you want to walk on.

Sherap Gyaltsen Lama, 24, a native of a remote village of Gorkha, was born to be a monk. Yes, belonging to a family where being monk is a rite of passage, as a middle child, Sherap had to come to Kathmandu for the same. This was after the sudden death of his father when he was four. However, one of his relatives advocated for his education, arguing that he was too young to be a monk. Fortunately, one of the Buddhist schools offered him a scholarship and he went for it. Receiving scholarships from Buddhist schools and high schools continued and he even completed his undergraduate studies with the help of a sponsor.

With all these favors, the pressure to become a monk was piling up. However, the shy child was deeply fascinated not by maroon robes but by stylish designs flaunted by actors and models in newspapers and magazines. Life continued at its own pace and so did his journey. He could neither express his love for his passion nor work on it as the profession had its own set of skills required.

With a lot of confusion in his head, he went around searching for inspiration from different workshops. Treading along these lines, he happened to get into Mentorship Pathway’s 10 Week Mentorship Program. The sessions probed him to ask deep questions about himself: the choices he was making and the dissatisfaction he was facing in his life. One of the sessions on attitude management touched him deeply. It motivated him to put grit above subject skills and knowledge and try things out in life. He realized it was modeling that he wanted to try his hands on. Yet still, he was afraid of the reactions he would get from his family, relatives and most of all from his society.

Determined, he decided to be a part of ‘Mr and Miss Glamour Icon, 2017’ and at least get the idea of what it feels to be a model for some weeks. But as one can expect, when you get the taste of the forbidden fruits, you want them even more. The same happened with Sherap. He gave his hundred percent and also bagged the title of the best model of the event. This achievement not only awed the people who knew him but Sherap himself.

He was always afraid to go after his forbidden love imagining the reaction it would evoke from society. But then, now when he has actually gone for it, his community members are felicitating him for actually daring to break the chains of societal pressure. These days Sherap is happily walking on the forbidden road with some interesting opportunities awaiting him.

Yes, you may be just one step away from your forbidden love if you dare to express. Sherap’s story certainly suggests it.  

Daily Reflection: Taking time to pause (Story of Transformation 39)

When was the last time you reflected about yourself?

Most probably 30 days back when this year embarked.

The first month of 2018 said “Goodbye”.

Do the oaths that we took on the first day of the year still make sense?

“Umm... Somewhat.”

This fleeting moment demands a continuous self-reflection. Don’t you think so?

Yes, it's good to reflect at the end of the year. However, my growing realization is that every minor event with its actions and reactions in our life has to be reflected. By the end of the year, we might remember the major events forgetting the minor ones. The ones which could have helped us wake up as a better person every morning. 

With this realization, I have tried to develop the habit of reflecting every day pretty strongly from this year.  At the end of every day, I journal my day so that I can improve myself continuously.

My personal values are ‘growth’ ‘depth’ and ‘care’. And I try to encompass these values even in my journal. When it comes to journaling, growth for me is not just writing words but playing with it and being creative. So, I try to come up with quatrain (four lines poetry) every day.  

To say, I will start reflecting every day is quite easy but to be accountable is extremely hard. Thus, I have made my reflection public through my social media with this I feel holding myself accountable to a group of people and feel positive pressure to keep it up.

And daily reflection for last one month has brought a positive change in me. Taking a pause was something I lacked last year. And journaling has helped me with this. Gradually I feel being able to take a mindful pause because as soon as I feel something terrible has happened I go back to my journal and read my reflections. 

Daily reflection has made me realize that every day is a roller coaster ride. Abysmal, today's ride may be, but it will definitely add a value to my forthcoming coaster.