Finding Myself

This is one of my first blogs after being a mom. Hell, it is my first blog after being married! And hey I have been married for a while now. So, while revisiting my blog was kind of nostalgia, euphoria all mixed in one, it is also a motivation to start writing again. I am struggling now, to put pen to paper, to translate the half- baked thoughts in my head, to comprehensible lines.

It is like a thousand volcanoes, dormant for years, have decided to erupt all at once. The gratification of words, places, actions, stories, lives led, people met, all wanting to spill on paper, convoluted, jumbled up tales, half- remembered, half forgotten,  knocking memory, aching heart, adventures other-worldly, all fighting for a spot in my mind.

Of the dalit family in Rajasthan that lost a daughter to upper caste violence and the trepidation of interviewing them for “She” was my namesake, lost to the world. Of the young woman who after losing it all to Cyclone Aila, has hope and is determined to make her life. Of the countless adivasi families in the forests of Orissa, displaced by incessant mining, losing their land and lives to fruitless legal battles. Of wild elephants that destroy habitations and evening mohua parties not in the glitterati lights of the cities, but the densely dark forests of Orissa, where silence is felt, not seen. 

I remember the sight of countless children submerged in water for hours, waiting to catch fish. Of poverty that pushes young boys, merely 12 or 13 years to hunt for crabs, hunched in anticipation in the murky lands of Sunderbans, easy prey for the tigers. I remember the sight of beautiful young girls, prostituting on the Indo-Bangla border. Of families in faraway Barmer, out-casted and forgotten, by government and others. I remember the elderly woman in Bihar clutching my hand, begging for her old age pension. She hadn’t eaten in days.  I remember the lines on the face of the man, waiting for his papers for legal ownership of his land in Udaipur. He had been waiting for over 15 years. They resembled the crevices of the man who I met in Bangladesh, patiently waiting for his land to emerge from the sea, Char land.

 Countless faces, numerous hands, stories/ anecdotes for some but living for me… I am but a documenter who has in the humdrum that is life, forgotten to capture what is mine. Here is the first attempt at reclaiming that space. A decade after I started this blog and left it to be, here is one more attempt at finding myself.