Letter to my ailing Granny

Dearest Granny,  

Remember that time I was changing you out from your soiled diapers, your frail legs up the air so I could wipe your behinds with those lavender fragrant wet wipes, you let a little gas out and my face was about five centimeters away. It was pungent. Adults’ food doesn't produce the kindest smelling gas. I was half laughing and half disgusted as you laid back, clueless of what had just happened and then, you struggled a lot when I tried to put the new diapers on. Granny, you need to put those on and not try to rip them off your body and try to go to the toilet. You and I both know it is close to impossible for you to wobble to the bathroom. 

One day, I rushed from work to meet you at the hospital. I found no taxis around me and I almost cried, when a micro came. I broad it and I don’t think reaching any destinations have ever taken me that long. Dad had called me minutes earlier asking me to come to the hospital to feed you sunn pani. Apparently, according to religious beliefs, you probably had a wish to get fed water from my hands before you made your way to the heavenly abode. As much as I didn't want to let you go, I knew this was the one thing I couldn't avoid. I was beside you a little after five. I fed you your favorite biscuits dipped with warm milk despite the doctor warning me against it, for the fear you might chock on the semi-solid food but you were effortlessly gobbling them down like a toothless child. You were obviously hungry. It was the least I could do for you. Before I left, I tucked you in bed and used a spoon meant for babies because that was the only size that fit the small opening you made with your mouth after gathering whatever energy you have in you and fed you the drop of water I was supposed to. It broke my heart that by night, you would have reunited with granddad even though, I know that is probably what you both want, I wasn't ready to let go of my last grandparent. 

Doctors gave you zero chance of recovery. Dad came home while brother took turn to look after you in the hospital, his eyes all red and puffy. Granny, your son is such a cry baby. He sat down with Mom and me, and started discussing how your funeral procession would take place, if we should take your body back to your birthplace for the final rites and the arrangements for transportation. We had everything planned out. That night, we barely ate. But, Granny, you are unbeatable. You survived. You are still surviving. You are immortal. How else can people with most of their vital organs failed, still survive? 

You and I have had our share of arguments; after all, we share the same blood. I have your same hair type and I am as angry as a person as you are. We regularly fought about how I cut your nails too short and why I don’t wear any bangles or earrings, and I have called you mean things because you gave Mom, your daughter-in-law, a tough time, you still give her a tough time now even though, you can’t do anything. Could you please ask for forgiveness? You are not the friendliest human being in the world, but maybe, on your deathbed, you would cut yourself some slack and just melt everyone’s heart.

It has been years since you have been struggling with your health now. Diabetics, Cholesterol, High Blood Pressure, Uric Acid; you have it all. Yesterday, I got an updated from Mom about your health. Looks like yet another few lakhs in the hospital but, this time Granny, please let go. It is time. You are already 80 years old. If you could still nag the way you could have a couple of months ago, I wouldn't have minded bringing you the best healthcare facilities to your bed but, you have stopped being you. I no longer see you, but just a body and you no longer recognize anyone, including me. Granny, you have fought on for too long now. Just let go now, it will be fine. I know you want it, too. I will miss you even though, for the past few years, you have been quite a nuisance. I am sorry I called you a nuisance. Human beings are not immortal, Granny. You aren't, as well. 

Lots of love,

Natini 

If I win the lottery

If you are in Australia, perhaps just in Melbourne and you belong to the league of I-will-win-the-lottery-this-time thinkers, then you must have heard about the grand $70 million prize this coming week and if you haven't then, ask around because I am not particularly sure how it works. So, two mornings ago, gentleman told me about it. He has won before; $23 for a $50 ticket, that paid well for his brunch, so in my opinion, he has the potential. The last time it was a $50 million jackpot, I only remembered about the numbers I had to give him a couple of days after, so to me lottery is just well, lottery. I have never played it, but if you think gambling is kind of like it, then I am quite the Queen of it. 

The conversation from how many numbers I am supposed to give, structured into what I would do if I won, I have to repeat it again, if I won. Bruno Mars has sang a song about being a billionaire and what he would do, many love that song and many dream of being rich, whether or not they are believers of the luck-game. I've come across too many people in life who have told me, if they had money, they would do this and that. I am not one of those dreamers. I am a doer. I do things, instead of dreaming and wishing. When it comes to something I can't get and when I can't get something, it makes me so agitated and makes things more complicated for everyone  because I will go through lengths to just get what I want. What I wanted will become what I need. Point is, I have never thought what I would do if I had a million dollars, or presumably  I won this $70 million pot. Though, the probability is zero, I thought I might as well have a plan and because it would make quite an interesting blog post, if I say so myself.

1. I would scour for the perfect family home with acres and acres of land surrounding the house. I wouldn't fancy it in any of the first world countries because I hate them, they are overwhelmed with richness that covers their insecurities. I imagine it to be either in Bali or Thailand, where there are many beaches and boosts of a pureness in culture and not the fast-food culture.

2. And to get to the family home, you would need a plane to fit the family. Hell, I would get a helicopter. Just because I can bloody well afford one with $70 million and for reasoning of accessibility. 

3. Remember Elizabeth Taylor's enormous engagement ring? Yes, definitely mine. I would go through all kinds of trouble to be its owner but I wouldn't mind settling for one of those less famous but absolutely rare gems. Diamonds have always been my greatest weakness. I have to drag myself away when I see one.

4. I will buy The Week or any doing well or well-to-do publications going online due to the decrease in paper readership. The Internet will always be here and there will always be readers. I would even buy the publication I am currently working for. This will be a lucrative purchase and a successful family business. 

And the list of small-not-so-expensive-buys which I might be able to afford myself eventually, but what the hell, since we are on it.

1. A chain of diamond necklace, one which never goes out of fashion and one that I can pass down generations and still leave everyone awestruck.

2. An iPhone 5. Or iPhone 4s or whatever iPhone. I hope my trusty Nokia doesn't get hurt but I need to move on and get into the smartphone generation. I am heavily obsessed with the bitten apple generation more than the ice cream sandwich system which from my observations, always get hanged. Plus, if some gadget hottie talks iPhone to me, I will be able to have a smooth conversation with him because well, I am one of those nerds who refreshes www.apple.com, watches the keynotes and follow endless forums around and after the release. 

3. And if I really get into Team Apple, then I will need to complete my gadgets accordingly and take iCloud seriously. I am typing from an ageing Dell hence, I would love a MacBook Air. As far as I am concerned, this is for me. Sleek and thin, something which will be an advantage for me having to always have my laptop around me to type things out. As wonderful as the iPad is, typing is pretty difficult and iPad's external keyboard isn't exactly something that would work for me. 

4. A home. With big windows, big kitchen, open beams, maybe brick walls, rugged looking classy home.

5. When I was 18, I wrote a story about me and in it, I went into my future. The future me drove this red Volkswagen. 

6. I decided with my first pay check, I would get myself a LV-something. I almost did get a wallet because they are the cheapest of their variety but then, I don't recall what happened and then, I completely forgot about it. Now, I have already blew off two years of salary just like that, into thin air. 

7. This. Forever. This is a Harry Winston charm as my luck would have it. Had it been a brandless diamond ring, I would still be a slave of it. But, I would never get this for myself. It has to come from someone who knows me freakishly too well. 

8. A claw foot bathtub with endless supply of expensive bath salts that leaves me smelling like heaven. It is not about sinking into a tub of heaven but sinking in a tub that looks like heaven's gift. 

9. Get concert tickets for Rachael Yamagata, Imogen Heap, Britney Spears and all my favorite artists, and have the best seat in the house. 

And now, I have got to go because I am boring myself.

Love,
Genisha 

Sleepless night ranting

10.25pm. It pretty much feels weird to be me right now. For the last one and a half hour, I have been trying to sleep. I don't believe in the counting of sheep or coaxing myself to sleep, because if my mind is wide awake, it is wide awake so I ended up reading a lot of articles on Thought Catalog, got inspired to write a few pieces myself and then, got uninspired again when I flipped open the laptop's screen and my thoughts went blank as I desperately tired to type out some words, if just for the sake of it until it got to the moment of frustration when I simultaneously pressed on to 'Ctrl' and 'A' and almost too quickly pressed 'Delete'. When I get stuck, I just feel like a worthless piece of human waste. 

And I am stuck now. I am writing because I need to write to clear my mind of whatever that is haunting it. You might think I know what it is that is on my mind but I don't. I will never know because it is not just one mantra chanted over and over again, my mind is far from a sweet melodies. If I am to compare my mind to the rhythm of music then, my mind is House Music with heavy rapping and then suddenly it goes to Blues before it soberly turns into good ol' Rock and Roll and then the jumbling of the genres in the next couple of hours before my mind finally wears out and bless the God, I fall asleep. I am just a troubled little girl with infinite thoughts.

One thought that could be keeping me up should be the invention of the driverless car probably penetrating markets in the next decade or so and how brilliantly the article was written on The Economist.  It was so well-written, I got affected by it in ways it shouldn't daunt me this much but it did. I am such an emotionally charged person, when something gets to me, all my cells are just gossiping with each other about what is happening. If only for tonight they would keep quiet because the cores of my bones are aching from the overwork on my muscles. The other thing that keeps me up all the time is the inevitable future. I wish I would just be reckless and not give a fuck about anything and just live in the moment. I am not like that, not a chance of that happening even in a billion years and even if I give the universe a billion dollars. 

I could watch a movie but I lack patience and characters talk too slowly and pictures slide by too slowly, like just cut the crap and just tell me like it is instead of going in circles because, again, I lack patience. I hate watching movies surely because most of them have too many irrelevant scenes in them and almost all have idiot endings. Also because every time I watch a movie, I cannot stop thinking every other second that such things doesn't happen in real life and thus, watching it, is not beneficial to educating my mind and instead it is polluting my mind. The recent one I watched was 'The Descendant' because George Gorgeous Clooney is in it but they wasted a lot of time on visual play and I basically hated George in ugly Hawaiian prints and the cliche rich  stories that Korean dramas have aced in. I just expect much more creativity from Hollywood, after all they have produced great movies like Requiem for a Dream and Pulp Fiction.  If I choose to watch something intellectual, then I am back to what driverless car is doing to me. I could read a book but the moment my eyes hit the bright glaring screen of the iPad because I haven't been able to download ePub files which basically means I cannot use iBooks' inbuilt innovations of night-read mode with the PDFs I have downloaded, I am squinting my eyes by 30s and in the next two minutes, I am feeling drowsy and the moment I put my fancy gadget down and call it a night, brain talks and cells start gossiping. Bright glaring screen excels at sleep mockery and movies just makes me hate myself that my life is not as perfect as movies portray it to be despite knowing reel life is not reality. I am a perpetual self-contradiction.

I feel sleep beckoning me. Maybe, I should give this sleep-call a go because it is 11.05pm now and my alarm clock is set to go off at 5am tomorrow. A plane is flying pass the sky above me, my bladder a little too heavy for a peaceful sleep. If I go to the toilet, I will lose sleep and if I don't, I will lose sleep, too. I should try counting the number of words in my favorite quotes the next time I cannot fall asleep, maybe that is just what I will do now.

Nights, 
Genisha 

10 things I need to do before I die

1.   At one point or the other, I want to be heavily involved in photography, especially nude photography. Our body is an art piece and I want to capture its wonders and marvel at the finished work. Be photographed nude, too.

2.   Live in Italy but life probably will be too twisted for me to ever live out this one single persistent dream of mine. Paris is not the city of love for me, Italy is. I think all the hottest salt and pepper macho men reside there and I want to watch beautiful people putting a fork full of homemade pasta coated evenly with homemade basic tomato sauce with fresh basils in their mouth.

3.   Be at my slimmest and fittest. When I was young, I couldn't be bothered to be fit and sexy. I was okay being the geek and now I want to look sexy in all dresses I wear but I never have the time to go for a run. In all the madness we face in life, I hope I will be able to squeeze a little time for my body because I really need to know what it feels like to be smokin’ hot.

4.   Write a children’s book and take it as a challenge, and if I manage well, eventually become a children’s book author. I am the last person who can spin tales of flying dragons and talking dustbins and what has children’s book got, but I have got one hell of a mind. I hope the inspiration will earlier than later because one day, I want to read the books I wrote to my babies as bedtime stories.

5.   Run out of pages in my passport before its expiry date which directly infers to travel vastly, anywhere and everywhere. I don’t need luxury, I don’t want luxury. I want cheap backpacking and tons of adventures and memories.

6.   To make a concrete wall of things I want to achieve, we want to achieve and follow it to the letter. In year 2013, we will achieve this much and in 2014 this and the years go on. Be ardent of all that we want to get achieved by certain time in our life.

7.   Being in the professional world of writers and making a living out of writing, I want to be known by someone who has never met me before through my words. I hope in one way or another to have struck a chord with someone with something I have written, especially, something which I took great efforts to   produce.

8.   Be educated, land a job I love so much I don’t mind not getting paid, have a beautiful home with a really huge kitchen, floor to ceiling windows and different designs of coffee mugs just because I know I will not be able to choose one design out of all the pretty mugs (I am quite the cup fanatic), get married for real, have lots of babies and grow old together with my husband, through thick and thin.

9.   This is one of those far-fetched dreams but opening a small, relaxing café in Nepal has got to be the best thing I can ever do for myself after I am done with dealing with anyone and everyone in the professional world and the world of money. I just want to create a small hub where people can come together to enjoy good coffee, good treats of food and ambiance,  where money is the secondary issue. I want to give people a place where they want to come back over and over again. A place where love can be found and inspirations struck and executed. I want to make a place where you become the person you really are, a place where you can reveal your true skin. I would particularly struggle for this because it will give me the opportunity to meet people from all walks of life, be able to create food that makes them happy and nothing is as wonderful as walking into a café with the smell of freshly brewed coffee and baked goods. I know I will have a small area just meant for me and I know that place will be my most favorite spot in the world. I will probably want to disappear into this little café of mine.

10. Finally, the most important one is to be happy and satisfied with wherever I am at life even if I have achieved nothing in life. 

Love,

Genisha

Love to me

Love in general

Love to me is the walk we take, holding hands in the grocery alley deciding what to have for dinner. The man I saw reading a book while walking right in the middle of the road, straight into people making way for him, and falling in love with his smile as he fell in love with the characters making him smile. It is music, books, movies, photographs and a comfortable chair. It is dark black coffee without sugar. Love is watching little babies who have just learnt to walk try to run. Love is discovering. Love is painful and pain in love is beautiful. Vulnerability is love, and so is folly.  Love is smiles and laughter; the louder the lovelier. It is the crawl into bed after a long day. Love to me is happiness, when something hangs onto my heart tightly. Love is like the wind catching in between the reddening leaves of autumn trees and the sunrise entering the room after a stormy night, maybe more beautiful. Love to me is the fights couples have, the disagreement and the hurting truth spurted in the midst of anger. Love is looking at people and watching their eyes, sometimes the expression cast on their face is so haunting I just want to touch them to let them know they are alive. Being there for someone is love, regardless how much of a stranger they might be. Love is lying to not hurt anyone. Love is giving and expecting something in return because there is only so much you can give. Love is fighting for the quilt in the winter night and then eventually giving up, and getting to the center of the bed holding onto each other for warmth, for sex and the world just revolving around the two. Love is waiting and knowing it is worth it.

My take on love

Love is something that makes me wonder. There are more days when I believe love to be a forced emotion, that two people in a relationship are in one because they crossed into each other’s life at the right time and just because and not because of fate or destiny or love.  The existence of love is a mystification, like a puzzle missing some pieces. Love is the Holy Grail of life and maybe, love should always be like the Holy Grail, knowing it probably exist but no one will be able to testify for it save for a few, the lucky few. Maybe, that is the beauty of love.

Love to me right now

Love to me is vague, like a dark sea on a painted canvas. Defined yet so mysterious. I know the sea ends somewhere, it has to end but in my quixotic mind, it doesn’t end. The sea flows into a gorgeous waterfall. Just like how a thunder surrounds the sea like as if it would engulf the entire ocean, love is like that. Emotions in love engulf us. We open ourselves and leave our emotions out in the open just to be struck over and over again. It is not a complain but complementary that two people from two walks of lives can come together with all the differences merged in between them to a faint line and all our shortcomings are tucked away, not overlooked but forgiven, like ruins of the sea on the seabed. Love is one lesson after another. We learn how to say the things our lovers want to hear, at the right time. We learn to please and get pleased. We learn to be each other’s weakness and strength and we learn our lover in and out, sincerely and unconsciously. And momentarily, when all our senses gather and we see ourselves and we don’t understand the rational over who we actually were and how we have morphed identical to each other, where our individualities has drifted away. Me becomes us and mine becomes ours. Love to me right now understands that love must exist. 

x Genisha