Hospital washroom politics is unreal. I have seen bigger locks on department washroom doors than I have seen on the department doors themselves. I have seen huge interdepartmental fights strike up not because some department fucked up someone else's patient care but because some of their staff used some other department's washroom. Like at this point I've power walked literal miles to get to clean and accessible washrooms around the hospitals. People around the hospital are scared of me because they have seen me walk around the hospital with murder in my eyes and they think I am a ferocious doctor ready to scold someone, but I am just and intern looking for a clean washroom to pee in. Me and my friends sit and discuss plans on which nurses to make deals with on which shift so that we could get to use a washroom.
My parents were quite young when they got married. My dad was 26 and mom was 23. When they got married they were a young couple bound in the bonds of arranged marriage, struggling in mumbai, pretending to be in love to fit in. And they could've been infatuated or even in love in those earlier days. I mean my mother was a bombshell and my dad was the handsomest looking man for miles. Idk about their personalities from back then enough to comment about that. They were piss poor and had to build up everything from scratch to support their family of 2, and the extended family of atleast 11 that my dad supported with his salary.
Then my mother got pregnant and they suffered the loss of who could've been my elder brother as well as the childish naivety that my parents harboured. My mother was struggling to survive and my dad was struggling to earn enough to support that. Both in different cities. When they got back together 2 years later, after 100s of letters and 2 minute long phone calls on the PCO that only allows for a 'aap kaise hai? Hum theek hai.', they tried to assimilate themselves into each other's lives. Enough to have me atleast. When I got into the picture the entire focus had changed. They no longer had to solely rely on each other for love. They had me to pour all of it into and receive it from.
5 years later came my sister and well they doubled down on not relying on each other. The demarcations of duties became clearer and hardly defined. The pool of love became us. Our school, our tution, our studies and investing money where it would benefit us is where their conversations began and ended. There were minor hitches and disagreements that devolved into fights of greater magnitude than deserving of but nothing life altering.
Now both me and my sister are out of our parent's house. Now their nest is empty and not every decision can be relegated to our choices. Every minor thing has to be done through the concensus of my parents and I believe that for the first time in 25 years they are truly alone with each other, in a space to now discuss themselves. Their likes, dislikes, ideologies, methodologies, experiences all laid out bare in the open.
And I don't think they very much like what they see. They aren't similar in any sense of the way. Polar opposites who have lived under the same roof for 25 years and not known about any of this. And they don't have buffers in between anymore. They argue like children about the smallest things without the middle ground in between and idk what to do about them🤷♀️
A/N: This may or may not be based on real events. I didn't know how to vent and then I wrote this. So I don't know if it makes any ounce of sense. Also I have linked all the songs so you can enjoy them as well. Enjoy!
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Y/N stared outside the window observing the occasional cars speeding past their own. She let out a sigh and took a drag out of her cigarette as the song playing on the stereo of the car changed. It was a beautiful playlist, she would give it that, if only a little unfamiliar. And sad.
She should’ve called dibs on the aux cord as soon as she entered the car but she was too occupied with other, much more important things back then.
That had led to this moment, here, sitting inside a car, pulled over on the side of this road that led to nowhere, surrounded by trees as she blew out clouds of smoke, listening to songs that made her feel things she decidedly did not want to feel.
She turned her head around a little to look at him and found that he was already looking at her, a strange look on his face.
She lifted her eyebrows- Kya dekh raha hai? What are you looking at?
He shrugged in response- Tujhe nahi dikh raha? Figure it out for yourself.
She rolled her eyes.
He started humming along to the song.
Jaane woh kaise log the jinke pyaar ko pyaar mila
Humne toh jab kaliyan maangi kaaton ka haar mila.
(I wonder at the people who find their love reciprocated
When I prayed for flowers, I was dealt a garland of thorns.)
She scoffed, he stopped singing and closed his eyes. She took another drag just to quell the little twinge of guilt that pricked her heart.
“This is peaceful, pehle kabhi kyu nahi kiya humne ye?” He turned towards her, questioning why they hadn’t done this before. His eyes were still closed, coward and stretched his fingers, asking for the cigarette.
She wanted to scream.
She handed him the cigarette regardless.
‘Pehle kab? When in the past should we have done this? When you were busy being an arse? Or when you were being a bitch? Or when you were out there making stupid decisions even after I warned you about them? Or was it when you were breaking my heart?’ she wanted to say.
But she didn’t. She closed her eyes as well. They were stinging.
‘Must be the smoke’, she thought. Smoke. Yeah, it has to be.
Hothon se chhu lo tum, mera geet amar kar do
Ban jao meet mere, mera preet amar kar do
(Let my song touch your lips and immortalise it
Please become my lover and immortalise my love)
They sat there silently, music washing over them accompanied by the chirping of birds overhead. It all made her feel drowsy. She did not want to sleep. Really.
“I am sorry.” He said suddenly, his tone held the intensity of a thousand suns.
‘Yeah that’ll do it’, she thought before opening her eyes.
He was looking at her again, the same weird expression from before adorned his face, maybe mixed in with a little bit of pain and something. She didn't want to dissect it. It won’t do her any good.
“Don’t. Just-” she sighed.
He looked like he was about to cry.
She leaned over the console, closer to him and placed her hand on his arm in hopes of comforting him somehow.
“Purani baat hai woh, it's in the past, I have forgiven you, isliye idhar tere saath car mai baithi hu. Wouldn't be in the car with you if I hadn't.”
“I miss you. I miss us.”
She had nothing to say to this. Just rubbed her hand down his arm. She hoped he understood that she couldn't give him more even if she wanted to.
They sat there for god knows how long, just him looking at her from his place in the driver’s seat and her staring out of the windshield at nothing.
Dhanak ghata kaliyan aur tare sab hain tera roop
Ghazalen hon ya geet hon mere sub mein tera roop
Yunhi chamakti rahe hamesha tere husn ki dhoop
(All these lush valleys, colourful flowers and the twinkling stars are comparable to your looks
Whether it be my poems or my songs, they are meant to pay ode to your beauty
May the sun of your beauty be everlasting.)
“We should get going now.” She broke the silence this time round.
The sun was about to set and it was getting slightly darker.
He nodded, shook himself out of his stupor and turned the key in the ignition. His eyes always aimed at the street as he drove through them.
It was her turn to look at him now. And look at him, she did. She stared at how the sun hit the curves and edges of his face, how effortlessly the wind swept his hair upwards in the front, how carelessly his glasses sat on the bridge of his face.
She looked at the lines of his arm and how his muscles rippled under the skin as his hands moved over the steering wheel. How his watch, the one he inherited from his grandfather, the one which was according to her slightly too big for him but ‘it is exactly how it is supposed to be, Y/N’ according to a very annoyed him dangled from his wrist.
She missed him too. She really did, whether she wants to accept it or not is an argument she’ll have with herself later.
He turned to look at her and oh. Hopefully she didn't have the same look on her face that he had had earlier in the day.
He lifted his eyebrows- Kya dekh rahi hai? What are you looking at?
She shrugged in response- Tujhe nahi dikh raha? Figure it out for yourself.
He smiled.
Abhi na jao chhod kar ke dil abhi bhara nahi
Abhi abhi to aayi ho, abhi abhi to
Abhi abhi to aayi ho, bahar banke chhayi ho
Hawa zara mehak to le, nazar zara behak to le
Yeh shaam dhal to le zara
Yeh shaam dhal to le zara
Yeh dil sambhal to le zara
(Please don’t leave just yet, my heart hasn’t had its fill.
You have just arrived, have just bloomed in like spring.
At least let the air gain your fragrance, at least let my eyes take you in.
At least let the evening set in
At least let my heart have its fill.)
“We are here.” he said and reached across the stereo to turn the music down.
“That was eerily poetic, wasn’t it.” He looked at her, a weird glint in his eyes.
She chuckled. It really was creepily perfect.
“Wait for a couple more minutes? Dil abhi bhara nahi.” He asked, dramatically grabbing her hands.
She couldn’t bring herself to deny him this, she had already been too rude to him. So she leaned back in the seat again and turned to look at him while he did the same, her hand closest to him still held in his hand. They just sat there looking at each other and for those couple of moments, everything apart from them and the present faded away.
He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it, almost too reverently for her to bear. She closed her eyes and sighed.
“I should leave now.”
He let out a shaky sigh.
“Yeah. Yeah.”
He moved to open his side of the door and she stopped him. She got out of the car on her own and came round to his side.
“We should do this again sometime.” he said, tentatively, a little hopefully.
“Yeah, maybe. Our little sutta escapade.”
“You should bring chai in a little thermos next time. Then it can be a chai-sutta escapade.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
She stood there for a moment more.
“Bye.” she said and turned around to walk home. Bye and not her usual see ya.
“Bye,” he hollered. “See ya” he whispered into the car as he reignited the engine.
All of you participating in the maggi discourse are wrong.
The perfect way of having maggi is to make saucy maggi and when it is hot, putting it into a Tupperware and closing the lid and letting the maggi coagulate in a cake like consistency and then having it 3-4 hours later with 7-8 other people who've not washed their hands in ages, by tearing shreds of maggi apart by hand like some hungry ass goblins who haven't seen food in years.
I've got 99 problems and most of them would be solved if I were allowed to look up at the ceiling and screech at it for 5 minutes nonstop and then sleep for 2 days straight. But oh well we are "civilized" people living in a "society", so I gotta make do with a cup of chai to sooth my troubled mind.
You guys there's a lot of posts about mandalorian on my feed and I havent seen one single episode of it yet but all these posts are making me tear up... what is happening??
Once in every couple months I find myself obsessively going through every single Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye video I can find and I just curl in on myself and let their voices flow over me like a blanket of warm comfort and.... fuck. Who needs therapy when you have them?
