Category: I Am

Trust

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Making a boyfriend jealous is tricky. One moves down the relationship in time and as the years pass love becomes colder as it grows older. The flame sticks around but the winds are sharper in threat.

It’s sad to try to make the person you love jealous. Because one thinks that’s the only way you can make him exhibit some passion. Or at least the passion he showed when he first decided to pursue you for a relationship.

The tricky part gets trickier when you are surrounded by admirers – exactly in the place he once was – but he’s not threatened by them at all because he knows you so well. Time has instilled in him a confidence to which only your character can be a testament. It’s sadder then, to know he knows you won’t let the other admirers affect you, because he knows you love him so much. Promises are written in stone by then.

So all you can do is then use the time with the others to feel how he once made you feel. Like you were worth it all – his time, attention and effort. Because let’s be honest, we all know we love but the passion flickers in the winds of time. So it’s rather a Catch-22 situation. Others around would say, you are rather taking love for granted.

So as someone pays attention to you, your attention is on him across the room. He knows that and so doesn’t bother to even notice the attempt to make him jealous. Or worse, he does notice it and is laughing inside at your feeble attention to gain some kind of emotional response other than his disparaging humour.

Love is wicked this way. It makes you certain of trust and uncertain of passion. Maybe that is why most people settle – because trust is worthier than passion. No matter how humiliating it can get as time wears on, and you begin to see yourself in the mirror and old anxieties come crawling back.(Not to mention an unsatiated libido.)

So, yea, if one is taken for granted, can’t one also take his love for granted and expect a passionate reaction?

December

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

There are some months that are not my favourites. October fills me with dread. But the month of December always makes me feel good. Since childhood, it played a very big part of my life. My best friend, Virginia, was Catholic, and I remember the Xmas tree in her house used to be really beautiful. White and full-leafed. It was placed by a window and I remember the morning sun making it glow. I remember asking my aunt, for a tree when I was around 4. I got it and the decorating of it was a family time. 

Over time, December became linked to new beginnings. A new year soon followed. The month itself brought a lot of hope and cheer – especially because i had so many references to it in the movies my family watched. I did my schooling in a convent school. So the theology presented itself easily to me, and I remember being wowed by the story of the kindness of St Theresa. She was the patron saint of my school. Lovely stories that included the quote, “what matters in life is not great deeds, but great love.” That surely left an impression on my mind. 

The school’s church was one of the best buildings I had seen as a child. A high vaulted ceiling. Walls on either side made from stained-glass. An altar that had one of the most beautiful images of Christ. I remember feeling at peace when I visited there. I thought, surely God lived in a place like this. As I grew into my atheism, I still held a place of reverence for that church. There are some places which indubitably speak of the nature of god – and what light should fill one’s being. That was one such place. 

December makes me think of those things. It makes me think of the bright lights of Hill Road, the entire month through. Stars, ornaments, garlands, gleaming at me from every stall and store. Christmas trees standing in regal splendour amidst scenes of the nativity. All of this being said, December has nothing to do with religion for me. It represents a time when things are soft and lambert. Where people generally tend to become light-hearted and festive.

I also particularly remember the winters of December, when the woollies would come out. It became the time for some warm cuddling with my favourite people. The sunsets also become spectacular in December, you know?

Slowly, family time of decorating the tree extended onto friends. As I grew up, the decorating of the tree became a tradition in the household. People would gather at my home to put up the tree, and everyone brought in some ornament or the other. Most of the ornaments now on the tree are brought by someone, and that becomes a story by itself. There are some ornaments that are decades old.

Every year, I make a visit to Hill Road. It’s the place of my childhood. Where I used to visit with my family, so many of whom have passed on. Their loss is bitterly felt and as I roam the streets of my childhood, I remember them. But those streets have changed. Skyscrapers have replaced one-storeyed bungalows and small buildings. The parks are teeming with people. They seem overpowered by the surrounding streets ballooning with luxury sedans and SUVs. But a trip to hill road over one of the Advents is just unmissable. 

I pick up ornaments each year. Pretty ones, bells, stars, fairies, santas, tassels, angel hair, crystal snowflakes and on and on. Everyone I have loved has come on a trip like this with me. That just is tradition, and it makes you a part of my clan. Christmas then isn’t just a festival for me. It’s an amalgamation of all those times I have spent with people I have loved. Who left me or passed on, but the memories linger and become crystallised as ornaments on all those trees I have had since I was a child. It’s not essentially about the birth of Christ, but everything He stands for, compassion, brotherhood, honesty, belief and love. He stood against racism, sexism, oppression and injustice. 

December isn’t just a month for me. It’s the settling down after a tumultuous year of life. Christmas isn’t just a day. It’s the link to cumulative memory and a catalyst to making another happy one. Many may not understand this, even those who love me a lot. But that is alright. I guess that’s what Christmas brings to me, a reminder that all that happened was both good and bad and neither lived on. Because there will always be another Christmas next year. 

Lazy

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Last night, I was speaking to a friend (let’s call him Dan) and he was talking to me about his ex and their breakup. In all the turmoil and the revelations, he also let on that his ex believed that Dan would hook up with me. I admit this is not the first time I have heard shit spoken about me, and it certainly won’t be the last. Through the years, I should be used to it all. I mean I have gone through it all – the browbeating, the bullying, the dad trauma, the laughter, the taunting and the trolling of late. People around me usually state that it should get better – I should have a toughened skin now. Sticks and stones and all that shit.

Lately, a sixteen-year old boy ended his life because of online trolling. I can imagine what he must have gone through, where faceless entities rail at you to die because of who you are. Some of my friends even wrote in privately when I shared some of his posts calling out his bullies. They basically said that it was sad, but he should have understood what social media was all about. He was setting himself as bait to be trolled. I found myself looking at myself in the mirror. What had actually changed since the thirty-three years of my coming out?

Basically, people are shit. Narrow-minded and petty. They just generally cannot understand anyone who is different. If a gay friend comes to my home, and we have conversations, we must be having sex to the outside world. If I walk with a swish and a swirl, I must be the bottom in bed. If I call out religious bigotry, I should not have an opinion because I am an atheist. I cannot tell someone older than I am that they are wrong, even when they are infringing the mental peace of someone else. So very seldom, when I have no energy to explain the depth of who I am – I just say what comes the easiest by means of an explanation.

I write, sketch, photograph, blog, and can hold a conversation and an opinion. I used to be an exponent of Kathak. Furthermore, I am liked by a lot of people. I have a large following on social media. It is because of who I am. But many people do not understand how do I not wish to earn money out of the various talents that I possess. People do not understand why I do not wish to showcase these talents and do what most people would do: exhibit and earn from them.

Sigh.

So today, when a guy asked me why I didn’t put up my art and my talent out there, I say what I have learnt to say by my elders. I am lazy. I take the negative connotation and I let it rest. But then, one of my partners, who has known me now for nearly four years, says that I am lazy. Dan said something to me, because he owes me no allegiance. His ex knows nothing about me. So they can assume what they will. I told Dan last night, it doesn’t matter what the world thinks about me, it matters when the people I love do not understand me. It is terrible.

One of the reasons I left dance it was because I did not want the limelight. I was and am a brilliant dancer. There is no ego in this statement. My Guru saw that in me right at the get-go. In six months of my training, I was put up on stage. I joined dance because since my childhood I always wanted to dance. But I was never allowed to, being a boy from a Sikh household. I gave up the idea of it in my teens. But then I fell in love with a Kathak dancer and when he left he broke my heart. So I plucked up the courage and walked into my guru’s home, one evening, and asked if I could start dancing. I was just turning 22.

When I spoke to her, I told her clearly, that I just wanted to dance, and I wanted to learn it. I had no desire to perform or to be put up on stage. She didn’t understand that. If I had talent, I was meant to show it to the world. I never understood that. I still don’t. The world did not matter. I was dancing because I wanted to be close to someone I loved. So after a decade of trying to make everyone happy, I realized it mattered more to be true to myself. I gave up dancing.

I could have taken up another teacher. But I just could not.

I love sketching portraits. I had a devastating heartbreak in 2020. A month later, I struggled with anxiety and panic attacks. I tried to divert my mind with art. I began sketching a portrait of Galadriel. It’s a beautiful frame. It is when she looks upon Frodo and tells him to go on a quest and find the strength from within. I can be quite allegorical. But I could not complete it. Depression set in hard. I struggled with it…still am. It has been over three years. Whenever I get back to it, I think of the time that induced me to begin it. But when I begin something, I always finish it. So I made my very first new year resolution, in 2023. That I would complete it before the year ended.

This year however has had its own twists and turns. In comparison to the last two, this one is dulcet. But it has been a calm one, comparatively. And the problem with me is that the time I have to myself seems to be less. Especially because of the first years of a relationship. The last time I opened the sketch to complete it, I found myself holding my mechanical pencil in my hand, staring at the circlet around Galadriel’s head. The man who I loved loved The Lord of the Rings, too. But I had found love again. I finally found closure as I stared at the unfinished piece of work in front of me. I closed it and returned to daily life.

“Lazy” is such an easy word. Depression and recovery, anxiety and self-doubt, love and loss, are such difficult ones. I understand some, I try to understand others. I wish the world was not so quick to label and blame and troll. There are hearts out there, who just want to be free to live and find their own version of happiness.

But December is my favourite month. So hopefully, it helps me in my quest to fulfil a resolution.