The Idea-smithy

My last tweet reads:

Ever get the feeling you’ve said all there is to say? That’s NOT where I am. I feel like nothing I can say now can top what I already said.

Let me try anyway. It’s not going to be pretty or classy or well-written. There are just too many thoughts running around in my mind and crash-boom-landing into each other.

I wrote this post last week. Of course you know that, you were there. For the first time on this blog, I’ve felt like I wasn’t alone, speaking out to a vast vacuum with no idea of where my words and ideas were landing, who was picking them up and what they were turning them into. Not any more. You were there with me, reading, re-living my experience and comforting me.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

It wasn’t a ‘this happened to me now so I must note it down in my journal’ entry. The Idea-smithy is very little a journal in that sense. But it was something that was experienced a long ago, a multitude of experiences - of events, of situations, of sensations, of emotions, of relationships, of people and of realizations. That’s what I write about and so I wrote about it.

Like I said, I wasn’t confident about sharing it online so I sent it to a few friends. Finally, after a couple of hours of sitting on tenterhooks, I did what I always do when I’ve been nervous long enough - threw out my fears, walked out and said,

I can’t bear to be scared anymore. So here I am, come and hit me if you will!!!!

Metaphorically of course, to the demons in my mind. Then I published the post, switched my computer off and walked out, intending not to look at the blog till Monday.

I went out with my dear, darling N and the little lord. My little lord, the only man to read the post before it was published, woke up from his nap and hugged me. Then the three of us played a giggly, silly Scrabble, ate dinner with our fingers and went home. As N dropped me off, she hugged me and said,

I’m glad you put it up. Brave girl! Good night!

As I opened my door, the phone buzzed with my no-nonsense, rockstar friend messaging,

You make me a proud blogger tonight! I’m so glad you put up the post! You rock, girl!

Earlier that evening, the lovely Meetu told me,

I shared the piece with some friends and they all thought it was beautiful! You should put it up!

And later that week, when I met her for lunch, over the fun, back-slapping banter, she leaned over and said,

No weirdos as yet. I’ve been watching. People are surprisingly decent!

So yes, this post is turning out to be a sentimental replaying of the things that people have been saying to me about my post.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

There is a reason I’ve been quiet for a week. A week, can you believe that of me!! No new posts, no changing the yahoo avatar, not even a reply to the comments, prompting my indignant spitfire pal to remark,

Woman, at least answer those comments! People are saying such nice things to you!

The truth is…I’m overwhelmed. I don’t know what to say.

I wrote the post for purely selfish reasons, like something I should have written in a diary years ago but decided to finally go ahead and do it - on the blog instead. I thought I’d get a few comments from people sympathizing (which I’d hate) and a couple of friends patting me on the arm and maybe, oh just maybe a couple of weirdass-trolly reactions.

What I was completely unprepared for was this. It feels like that post was sitting atop a huge lock of emotions and experiences - my own and a lot of other people’s. All week I’ve been caught in the flood. Comments, emails, IMs, tweets, messages and phone calls. Friends have called of course. Strangers have written in and shared intimate experiences that I can’t even talk about since I’m bound to silence by their confidence. And most of all - the people in between, neither friends nor strangers, people with whom I have a connection but not a relationship - have shown me their human faces and I am finding it really difficult to keep them at arm’s length now.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Someone I was annoyed with months back and stopped calling, called me and said she had read the post. And in the next moment, she was in tears and telling me about a relative who had abused her at age 5.

A colleague sent me a message telling me how much it had touched him. A colleague I say? Yes, I’ve maintained a strict no family-no colleagues policy on this blog till last week. Writing that post dissolved a lot of my own rules. And when someone at work asked me for my address, I gave it and found this message the next day.

People I hang out with often and never discuss anything more personal than my boyfriends and even that only in jest - spoke to me and told me quite honestly that they didn’t know what to say. I just wanted to say that I appreciated that. It was like I showed them my real self - the one behind the smart comments and style statements - the messy, emotional one and they responded. Well.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

I was also pleasantly - most pleasantly! - surprised by the reactions of men. Friends and strangers. I do not believe (well, not anymore) that every man is a sex-starved monster. I have had the privilege of knowing and being loved by many wonderful men. Family, friends and yes, lovers too. Some of the men who have commented have demonstrated in their own ways how much they love and support the women in their life. For the women who have suffered and relate to my experience, please do read those comments as a reminder that half of the world - the other half - may be just as caring and wonderful as we are.

I want to add that my experience does not trivialize the brutal experiences suffered by hundreds of little boys worldover. Child abuse is not gender-specific and I suspect a lot of men relate just as well to my post as women do. What’s worse is that women still have a chance of receiving some comfort and sympathy when they share their experience but I think most men don’t even feel comfortable enough to talk about their horrors. My heart goes out to them. I wish I could say more. I wish I could do something to make the world a safer place for children - girls and boys.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

The most heart-rending of all has been reading and listening to the experiences of others. People who haven’t spoken about their horrors opened their hearts and bruised souls up to me. I feel so helpless, so powerless. I have no balm for their pain. Nothing to say except mumble,

I know, I know. At least I think I do.

Almost guiltily I find myself feeling really grateful, so very thankful for how lucky I am. I was not assaulted by a member of my family. I was 9 or 10 and reasonably old enough to understand what was happening. And though my post didn’t cover this very well, I had a supportive family. They believed me when I told them and did everything in their power to make things easier and as normal as possible for me. They did not restrict my freedom, guilt-trip me or even probe me about my experience. And years later, I learnt just what a horrible experience it was for them to learn that their little one was experiencing something that they could not protect her from. But they let me learn and supported me in every way they could, my parents did. What a blessing that was, I can see only all these years later.

In the later years, I also had access to books, media and the Internet where I was able to learn more about what I had experienced. I learnt about trauma, child abuse, sexual assault and the various ramifications (physical, psychological, mental) on the victims. I discovered - and which to this day I hold true - that the nastiest cut, the most potent poison in such an experience is the fact that the victim ends up as the casualty AND the guilty party. Whether it is self-imposed or societal, most people I spoke to after this post exhibited either directly or otherwise, an unwillingness, an embarassment, fear even of sharing their experience with other people. My first reaction while putting up the post was defensive as well.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

One particular friend I shared this experience with, shared something of her own. A brutal experience but also the pain inside her, which didn’t come out in the form of tears but which I could see in her eyes. Her words chilled me.

I find sex disgusting.

And then for thought,

You know the odd thing is that we are the kind of women no one would ever expect to experience things like this. We’re bold, proud, smart and independent. The kind of women who won’t take shit from anyone at all. Who would think it?

It made me think that we’re that way not despite our experiences but because of them. Somewhere after the realisation that there is no one around to ‘make things alright’ for you - no teacher to shoo off bullies, no parent to pull you out of trouble, no friend to stand up for you - somewhere after that, you make up your mind that you’ll take care of yourself after that. Forever and forever.

All I can say is how glad I am to have written it. I really thought it was over and the fact is that it is. And yet the healing goes on. Every conversation, every relationship is a proof of the fact. Every minute is a reminder to myself that it is okay to ask for help.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

There’s something else I’d like to add. From the comments I received, I gather that some of you think that I’m being brave and noble and forgiving of my guitar teacher. The truth is that I’m not. I am not a forgiving person (ask my boyfriends, ask my ex-friends, ask anyone who has ever stood me up, said something nasty to me or hurt me). I am one of those people who carries a hurt like a badge of honour long after the war is over. But the truth is that I really feel nothing more for my old teacher. No anger, no resentment, no fear, no coldness, no disgust. Nothing. It is just as if he were a total stranger and I didn’t know him at all.

Perhaps not entirely unrelated, I took guitar lessons for 3 years and even played on stage once. But to this day I can’t play a tune. It isn’t that I haven’t tried. But I hold the guitar, mutely and there is no recollection of the chords and notes that I know I used to be able to recognize. I have no connection or recollection with that music anymore. It is as if my teacher and my guitar are both strangers to me. I gave away my guitar a few years later, donated it to an orphanage. I can only hope that it brought some child more happiness and music than it brought me.

I remember reading once that Rudyard Kipling grew up away from his parents, with a nanny who battered and abused him. He wrote much later that the experience had left him unable to feel any anger or hatred. I know just what he meant. There is nothing more that I know how to say about this experience.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Thank you.

Thank you so much for reading. Thank you so much for writing to me. Thank you for telling me that it will be okay. Thank you for sharing your souls with me. I’m so, so very touched.

And finally, I’m sorry for being such a moony, loony sentimentalist and embarassing you (some of you anyway!). I blame it on the rains, they always have a weird effect on me. If you like my fiery, sharp-tongued, stylized self better (and oh, say you do, I work hard on it!), I’ll be back soon!

Over at DesiPundit, Pat has put out a call for guest contributors. As someone who joined the team by answering their earlier call in December, let me tell you it’s great fun. It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be since every blog I visited had at least 10 links of which at least 1-2 would be new to me. One led to another, links came up and I was DesiPunditting effortlessly! Let me also add that this blog has seen a fair bit of interest on account of my being a DesiPundit so let me offer this plug-post up as a return gift. To come back, if you’re checking off on all the criteria Pat has listed, don’t think any more - just write in already!

If you’re missing on any of those things, I’m sure you’ll still have a link or two to share that none of the DesiPundits know of. We’d all be much obliged if you give us a nod in that direction via a hat-tip. And finally, if you are really, really shy and don’t want to get all the way up there but are just reading this because you love me so much (!), shoot me a mail with the link. I’ll be happy to give you a mention when I link it to DesiPundit.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~

I just trotted over to Desicritics this morning to check for new posts. It wasn’t till my mid-morning snack break/browse that I bothered to scroll up. Heh! Featured Desicritic? First the DNA article and then this? Ooh la la…the spotlight seems to be in love with me this month.

Okay, now you can roll your eyes at my vanity.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~

I met her earlier in the month over a delightful date gone all wrong. Of all the very many things that she said that stay with me, this one pertaining to this blog finds mention here:

You’re writing a lot more and about bigger things now. But frankly, I preferred your old blog. It was so much more personal.

I know, love but it’s hard to stay personal when the blog is suddenly public. I don’t handle attention all that well - too much of it or too little of it. I’m suddenly writing a lot more, for several other blogs. It’s an oddly disconcerting feeling that I’m hardly ever writing for this one, only cross-posting things that have been written for other places.

Oh well, my feed-count, my twitter following and my new commenters list have all shown a spike this month. So this otherwise meaningless post is a pat on the back for my dear blog. Tomorrow…back to business!

It has been so long since I wrote a post…just because…that it feels wonderful.

Welcome to the new home of Ideasmith! After all these years of living on rent, I finally have a place of my own!!!! The workshop has grown from being a little corner of Rediffblogs/Blogger/Wordpress bandwidth to The Idea-smithy! I’ll take a minute to remind you that The Idea-smithy is a place, the workshop of my ideas, home to my creations. I am IdeaSmith, Chronic Thinker, Compulsive Blogger, Unabashed Ranter and I welcome you to this blog.

This blog-warming post has been too long in the offing, thanks to a few techno-bugs that needed to be sorted out. Before we proceed, let me thank the people who’ve made this possible:

Sakshi Juneja, bloggy-midwife and god-mommy to my new blog. Thank you Sakshi, for the push that made me drag my lethargic fingers from Wordpress to my own domain. Thank you for the time spent on instruction, the patient listening to my hysterical “My blog vanished!!” whining and all the hours spent prettying up this blog. Thanks for taking the time out and for the genuine interest in helping set up this blog. The new Idea-smithy is as much your baby as mine!

Karun, an unobtrusive visitor to the Idea-smithy for awhile now. Thank you for the support, thanks for the quick responses to all my queries and thank you for the additional perspective,

You do realise that you will now spend more time maintaining this blog than writing?

Heard and understood, saar and I’ll try and keep the output at satisfactory levels.

Alap Ghosh, my knight in digital armour, thanks  for the incorrigible jokes spliced with verbal rap-on-knuckles for hasty decisions and timely help in deciphering the techno mumbo-jumbo thrown at me these past few days. Thengyu, thengyu, thengyu and I’m taking you out to dinner to celebrate.

                                                                                    

Arzan Sam Wadia, the gracious godfather of the new Idea-smithy for playing fairy godfather(!) and whooshing away the demons that threatened the existence of this new blog! With your bloggy-blessings, I embark on this new venture..

                                                                                      

Finally, thank you dear readers of my old blog for your patience in the past few weeks. I really hope that you enjoy this blog as much as the older ones, if not more. Your feedback, comments and emails are more than welcome…they’re most important to me to keep this blog alive. So please sign off with your thoughts on each post you read and drop me a line every now and then to tell me what a great (or crappy) job I’m doing!

And now, start reading!

Ideasmith has been busy. Ideasmith has been unwell.

Ideasmith has been recycling posts. Ideasmith has not been replying to comments and mails.

Ideasmith says SORR-EEEEE!! for being less than perfect. Ideasmith needs a break.

Don’t go away please, I will be back…thodi hi der mein haazir.

(of course you knew that already except this time I’m saying it too!)

And in the meantime, pat me on the back for having a post featured in Hindustan Times Blogosphere section last week. Yippeee…the thrill of seeing my words in print never leaves me.

In blogging, just as in the real world, we move in cliques. We read, link to, are commented on by the same finite group of people. Well, I’ve never been one for settling down into one group of people…a trait that earned me the moniker of ’social butterfly’ and a few less desirable descriptions in college. I can’t help it…I start to stagnate, can feel myself shrinking (shutting up like a telescope like poor Alice in Wonderland!) if I stay in the same situation, same group of people for too long. New groups, new situations, new people, new ideas rejuvenate me.

So friends, readers and fellow-bloggers, lend me your links. Taking a cue from Ammani, I’m asking you to drop me a link to a post that you saw somewhere and liked a lot. It would be good to also hear what you liked about that post. I would really love to read some fresh new blogs. While I’m fairly enjoying the 150-odd feeds on my list, I want some new bloggers on my roll. So plizz to oblige…drop me links to blogs wonly and not other websites.

Thengyu vairy much!

I went to yoga class this morning. After over 7 months.

I haven’t felt this good in a long time. I also don’t remember the last time I did something without thinking about 20 other things at the same time, planning for the next 4 hours at least, all while trying to do whatever I was, at that moment. I didn’t even realise when the clock went from 7 am to 9 am.

I was a little concerned that I would be woefully out of shape, the way I was when I first began. Stiff as a board, even as the youngest member in the class, it was frustrating, how I couldn’t bend over or backwards easily. Surprisingly my lower back didn’t trouble me too much. It used to be the biggest hurdle in my stretches and my teacher said it was because I was carrying too much stress and it was going down into my back. Today however, my right side was knotted and stiff. It’s a reminder that the body echoes the state of life and the mind. I sit in the left-most corner of my cubicle. And my right side, which is the side that everyone usually sees of me, is the one that’s stiff and clenched. Does that indicate how propped-up, how unnatural, how artificial, how very repressed, restrained and forced I’ve been? Yes, it probably does. My left side, generally hidden to the world doesn’t suffer the same problem.

God, I’d forgotten why yoga is so therapeutic. It is really all about getting acquainted with your body. Usually, the experiences associated with the body…a long bath, a massage and sex….seem to be about removing something, getting something out, a sort of deliberate losing of consciousness. But yoga is about being gentle and understanding, a heightening of awareness. Yoga really is about listening to your body. Quite simply that….how much do we know about our own breathing? Do you breathe fast or slow? Hard and jerky or smooth and shallow? From your chest or your stomach? Through your nostrils or your mouth? Think about it. And understand it.

Right this moment, I can feel every breath go in and cool my insides. I can even feel the roadblocks in my breathing, physically caused by bad posture and conjestion but really due to blockages that have accumulated. My body and spirit are in dire need of spring-cleaning. I’m on vacation this week and that’s what I’m going to do!

It’s the season of colour again, once upon a time my favorite festival of all till it acquired the elements of rowdyism and filth. I’ve always loved colour and water and summer and Holi combines all three. This year however, I am not celebrating with colour. In fact I haven’t stepped out of the house. I can hear the drums beating, the colours glistening on wet roads and the raucous shouts of uninhibited fun rising up to my window. I don’t want to be a part of the colour today. Maybe I’ve had too much of colour lately.

There’s a time to rest and a time to dwell in blankness too. After all, the finest paintings begin with a blank canvas. I’m wiping the page of my life clean. This Holi will be my ‘white day’ of the year. So I wish all of you the clarity, cleanness and innocence of the colour white this season.

On another note, the Pensive Lawyer SMSed me this morning with a reminder of how much of water is wasted every year on Holi in a time when there isn’t enough clean water to go around. I’d say stay clean, stay nourished and have fun but be mindful of how much you take and how little that leaves for the rest of the world.

When my words stop getting through to you
All I have left to express myself, is silence.

I am very annoyed to find that my posts are being copied and passed off as original. I know this happens to some extent but I’m appalled to find how unabashedly this person is filching my posts.

Here are two of my posts I found:

http://thedireass.wordpress.com/2006/11/16/fascination/
which I wrote way back here.

He has also copied No Promises here. At least this one has a link back to my post but I’m irritated nevertheless. Mr.Direass, do you have anything to say for yourself? Or am I giving you too much credit by imagining you can actually say something original?

Here we go again. People are rude. Sarcastic. Judgemental. Nasty. Vile. And people are cowards too. Do I need to spell it out? Yes, I do apparantly. Again and again.

If you have a viewpoint, you’re welcome to it. I’d even like to hear it. But I’m listening for your opinion, your ideas, your thoughts. Not the vile trash that passes through your mind. If you need a place to vent these, as indeed do most normal human beings, find a friend, write a diary…hell, write a blog! Don’t come and dump your issues on me. Or indeed on my blog.

Mr. Eye-roller is someone who turned up on my blog yesterday and left behind his marks (here, here, here, here, here, here and here). First things first, I am immensely grateful to anyone who takes the time to read my writing. It is a pleasure, an honour to avail of your time…and I really mean this, no sarcasm.

However, I have an issue with rudeness, I really do. I am just not one of those serene people who can let it slide off me and let the world be the dump that it wants to be. I am also not polite enough to keep quiet about it.

So Mr.Eye-roller….I’m absolutely positive you’re male. You may intend me to think that you’re a woman but hell, no, no woman would actually say things like you have. Sure, I know not every woman feels and says things as strongly as I do about men, about life and love and relationships. But I also know that there is a semblance of rationale and genuine emotion in what I write. Whether I write well or not, I know it is something that almost all women are able to relate to. You obviously haven’t. And believe me, it isn’t because you’re male (I have at least some male readers)….its because you and I just don’t see eye to eye.

I still don’t have a problem with that. I totally respect people who have opinions that conflict with mine. I do, however have a problem when they try to force them down on me. I have a big problem when they attack me. I have a HUGE problem when they do it anonymously. And most of all, I have a really MASSIVE problem when they do it the way you have done.

Eye-roller, if you really believe what you are saying, come out in the open and speak to me again. Leave behind an email address and we’ll take this conversation offline if you prefer it that way. Or leave your comments behind, I promise I’ll publish them un-edited and respond. Just stop leaving behind anonymous nastiness like this. Its like entering someone else’s house and throwing mud around. Its basically creepy.