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Monday, April 4, 2011

The Inheritance of Loss 3: The cycle ends (hopefully).

So I’ve lost my wallet, my cell phone and a few days after the cell phone I realised I lost a green notebook I set a lot of store by along with a white hair band  that I owned since my primary school days.  I can survive without the last two, as, of all the things I’ve currently been losing those two are the ones that are the least important. However, those two are  things I hold the closest to my heart.

That notebook had a rough draft of a poem, notes from the research I’d done on William Blake which was the groundwork for an article I wrote for the English Department journal; my first ever published article...... It also held ideas, jottings for new blog posts....
That white hair band must be the plainest accessory I’ve ever owned but it was a constant reminder of my school days, my friends, and my childhood. In some bizarre fashion it sort of linked my childhood in UAE to my teenhood in Mumbai.

As usual I have no memory of where I last saw them. Not a single clue. No one around me does either. Already bogged down by the stress of too many things missing I’ve given up on the last two, albeit after the ritualistic hunting process.  Nothing great has happened. Eventually I had to give up on them what with my final exams staring me in the face and my friends hammering it into my thick skull that I have bigger fish to fry.
So to quote the Indian media’s favourite cliché, "How do you feel now?" and in reply to that I don’t feel much, to be frank I don’t feel anything at all. After all the initial madness filled with anxiety attacks, eerie dreams, disturbed sleep and obsessive ranting about my lost objects I feel nothing. Zilch. Rien.
It’s simple really; the point of it all is I’ve learnt something out of it. You can’t hang on to things in life or people for that matter and being the hoarder that I am it’s an important lesson learned. No single person or thing in life are ever ‘the most important thing' of our lives because eventually, we learn to live without them. All the voids and hollow spaces they leave in and around us fill up. There might be the occasional bad day; times when you suddenly long for that thing from the past but then it goes away and you learn to cope with it. I can’t say I’m completely cured of my negligible strain of OCD but I’m on my way. 

Suddenly, things and routines I couldn’t do without; an absence of which would evoke fear, doubt and unreasonable apprehensions, that would keep niggling at the back of my mind stirring up a lot of negativity in the process, have stopped looming over me thus losing their larger than life appearance. The first step has been accepting the fact that ‘Alright, I do get more nervous than socially accepted and permitted levels of nervousness’.  Second step: realizing that a small event or string of events can affect the bigger picture of my life only if I want and make them too. Three: this is going to be a long, long process and requires a lot of belief and faith in myself. I shouldn't be expecting any overnight miracles and nor should anyone else.

So basically, losing 4 important items on 3 different occasions brought to the fore a problem I’ve been pushing aside as ‘just an annoying habit’. That’s looking at the bright side of the situation. Getting back to the realistic side of me I wish that this annoying disappearance of personal articles ends once and for all.

Hoping that, like Sonya says, "3 is the charm".

Falak




11 comments:

  1. Hey Falak.. i can only imagine losing the kind of things that you lost.. but i'm so glad to see what you've taken out of it.. everything happens for a reason and it depends on us to make the most out of an experience(good or bad)...like you have!
    p.s.- remember u are stronger than u think u are

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  2. yohanna: Thank you! I will :)

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  3. hmm falak! gud editing i must say, my first look went towards the spacing and what a progress in formatting my girl!

    very well written self-expression of your learning from the random missing things!

    hopefully this losing drama ends quickly and may u gain things which are of utmost importance and useful to u!

    falak hope u ve an awesome time during ur break and rock it!!!

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  4. Hey falak sorry for replying late again but i promise i wont now cz i finally got my cpu bk! neway awesome post yet again! im so glad that u're finally moving on n accepting ur loss. i must admit it was quite annoying during the days wen u went on n on bout wat uve lost(pls dont hate me :P) but it was totally understandable knowing that ur very particular n careful bout ur belongings. but stil u shud nvr be so hard on urself especially for material things which is a lesson im sure uve learnt by now.
    the reason why i love ur posts is coz thru ur personal experiences u send out a message to ur readers that's very useful in day-to-day life. even though ur talking about material things in these 3 posts, u talk bout coping with loss n looking at the bright side which is very important. at the end life goes on no matter what you lose...

    as long as u dont lose your mind :P

    keep it up falak!!!!!

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  5. Sparsh:- Thank you! My formatting generally tends to reflect my thoughts which means it's mostly cluttered and scattered around :) So if you think there is a certain amount of clarity in this post then I guess it reflects my thought process:D

    Bev:- I won't hate you for telling me the truth :D. I'm glad that my personal experiences, to which I give a lot of unwanted attention is helpful to you and others who read the blog :)Funny thing is seeing my own perspective, thoughts, opinions in the written form later on helps me to prioritize things in my life! So I guess writing this blog has and will always be a win-win situation for me!

    Like you said 'As long as I don't lose my mind' :D

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  6. It pains me to lose things too, and I'm the scatterbrained type who is always leaving things behind, so I really sympathize. The only consolation I can give you is cold comfort: in the end, we must lose everything. If we manage to hold onto our integrity and the love of a few good people, we are doing very well.

    To this day, I fondly remember the pair of earrings that were stolen from my flat in New York, and the hat and scarf I left behind in Turkey.

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  7. Mary: I read your post about your cell phone... I wish someone would return mine to me but that is hoping for too much in a city like Mumbai.. I completely agree with what you've said above; it is this very bitter fact of life and a couple of amazing friends who have helped me through these many missing items.
    Someone actually stole your earings from your flat?!

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  8. Hey!! I'm new to your work, but I really loved this piece! I totally loved it when you said that we can't hang on to a particular person or thing...it is like, so true! But to be honest, it takes time for me to follow that. Lol. Anyways, I will definitely be checking out more your works! Till then, ciao!

    Revathy

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  9. Revathy:- Thank you for taking time out to visit my blog and encourage me. I hope you like what you see here. Both bouquets and brickbats are accepted. You're welcome to visit the blog as often as you like :)

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