A Bemused Writer

Tag: content

  • Shifting homes & living alone

    I will soon be shifting my home, and I always knew, that leaving this one would ache a lot!

    My father was in a transferable job, so we would shift cities every two years, and hence moving homes has never felt like a major step in life, but something I have been made to be habitual of. But this time, it’s not me moving from a place with my parents, it’s me moving from a place that was the first one I called my own!

    I shifted here when I started working, and it’s been almost two years now. 20 salaries, one promotion, one major heartbreak, a few moments of feeling loved again, and thousands of lessons later, I am finally leaving this cozy little place behind.

    Living alone here was something I will cherish for the rest of my life, for this is the place that made me believe that no matter who comes into and goes from my life, I am capable of being there for my own self – managing my emotions, thoughts, anxiety and all my sick days!

    These walls here, they have heard me grooving to my favourite songs, and they have also heard me cry all night long – clinging to my pillow and telling myself, “Simran, it’ll be alright, you got this!”

    Would the walls of the new house feel the same? Would they want to hear my stories for hours and absorb everything they see me go through without uttering even a single word out, making me feel safe and secure of a life I live within them?

    I know I can gather things when I begin boxing this place up, but how do I gather the memories? How will I ever run to the same corner of the sofa where I first realised, I have moved on from a major setback in life, and how will I sit in the middle of the same bed where I have spent nights trying to figure out life?

    These 658 days here, would be engraved on my heart, forever!

  • Is it really selfish to be selfish?

    The most selfish thing one can do is to cheat on their partner, but is it really selfish to be selfish?

    There are enough theories about it out there, that speak for and against the act of selfishness being actually selfish, but there is none that can help me, you or this world put down one particular notion as a universal truth for everyone to believe and abide by.

    It was not a warm lazy Saturday afternoon set in Delhi, where while doing the weekend house clean-up I suddenly heard his phone ring, and when I reached out to pick it up, I realised it is that one phone call that I never in my life had expected to have received.

    In fact, it was loads of weekdays, after weekends, after weekdays that kept sending me signals, and I kept ignoring them, until that one day, when his phone did ring, and he picked it up and went to the balcony for five minutes to address it, to later join me back at the dinner table, not feeling the need to tell me who it was and why he had to get up and go away to take that call.

    After that one night at dinner, I suddenly started paying attention to all the calls he got, and how his facial expressions would change at each of them. Not that he wanted it all to come out on his face so transparently, but four years is a time long enough to know how your partner’s lips would curve in response to what kind of an emotion.

    Only if, four years would have also been enough to know that this person you thought you knew inside out, is someone you barely know, and that is not because you have not been attentive enough, but because they have been too good at making you want to believe what you wanted to.