Chasing the Years of My Life...

"I'm ten years old. My life is half over and I don't even know if I'm black with white stripes or white with black stripes!" - Marty- the Zebra, Madagascar.

So, yet another year has come to pass. I don't grow up anymore; I only grow old. By now, I know a few things with certainty - like eventually you get over almost any crisis in life, no matter how soul-sucking and stupendously indelible it may have seemed at one time. Also, I know which are the things that really matter in life - like fun and friendship.

You were a good year, 26th. I'm almost longing for you to be back. I made amazing new friends, cut my hair, learnt Spanish, learnt how to cook, worked hard, partied harder, danced a little, sang a lot, wrote some, and dreamed many armchair adventures. I went on a vacation to frikkin' China! (Beat that now.) It was a year of reminiscing and forgetting, forgiving even - a year when you pick the pieces of past and reorient your life, little by little. It was the kind of year that gives you hope when you look back upon it.

I think about the past decade often - a succession of revelations. I went through years when I didn't like myself too much. Then through years when I grew comfortable with my imperfections and contradictions. Eventually, I learnt to live with myself. As a corollary, I learnt to live with others.

I learnt that knowing that expectations are traps just doesn't save you from them. And that true freedom lies not in their defiance, but in their righteous fulfillment.

And oh, I thought a great deal about love, of course. I shredded the concept to pieces - analysed it, experimented with it, embraced it, resisted it, condemned it. Once, I surrendered to it and let myself be comforted by it. Once, I simply walked away from it. Once, it was ruthlessly taken away from me. I learnt that it is difficult to move on without achieving closure, but that sometimes you just have to do it. I contemplated the nature of longing and loss and discovered that often one begets the other. And so I learnt to perfect the art of un-possessing, un-belonging; of severing ties and of letting go.

I learnt that you live some moments in life which seem perfect; and that you long to preserve them. I also learnt that these moments seem so perfect only because they are transient and because you cannot frame them inside a snow globe and hold on to them forever. I learnt that memories are one of the surest sources of joy in one's life.

These have been years of reckoning - of growing older and wiser; of growing richer with every experience.

In a few days, I'll have surpassed 26. I never imagined I'd be a 26 year old when I was young, but I had an inkling of what I wanted to feel like when I am a woman.

And today, I feel every bit like the woman I wanted to be.

The Girl who Lives behind Picket Fences.

At her best she is shallow; for shallowness is the rightful virtue of women who are darlings. Beautiful women are the burden bearers of all things lovely and ought not to be buoyed down by meaningless depths.

At her worst, she is profound, for intellect never fails her. And she is often at her worst: forever discerning epiphanies while believing none existed; trusting instincts while knowing premonitions were apocryphal; fathoming intensity while assuming sentiments to be delusional; searching for love while fearing vulnerability. She is aware of her contradictions.

She reserves her best for the kinds of you: who she knows she runs the risk of falling for. She reserves her worst only to herself. Indeed she lives behind her picket fences and she has no intention to be understood by you at all.

You'd notice her if she walked past you, though she's not your idea of an ideal beauty. You could spot her wearing a red silk dress in a sweltering summer bazaar, where she would unmindfully look through you and breezily walk past you - leaving you wondering if she'd come alive from the pages of the classic novel you'd been engrossed in. Or you'd see her standing with a bottle of beer in hand, wearing a pair of battered blue jeans that hung limply to her tiny waist, and the hems of which have been worn out by use, at an up-street high-tea party. In fact, you could run into her anywhere - where it appeared as though she didn't belong. And yet if she ever let you meet her eyes, you'd notice her silent pride in her intentional irrelevance.

If you talk to her, you'll ask her why she is single; and she'll ask you if that is a trick question. You'll ask for her number and she will oblige.

You'll think you'd fallen in love with her, but you'd merely have been enamoured by her mysterious ways. And she will never reveal herself to you, or to anyone else, subconsciously striving to keep love at abeyance.
You'll want to hold her. You'll want to spoon against her small frame in a soft bed, shrouded among satin sheets. You'll want to brush the careless strands of hair off her face when you wake up next to her in the morning. You'll want to spend hours sitting next to her under a cherry tree in full bloom, familiarizing her with your hopes and dreams and aspirations - painting for her a vivid future together with you, persuading her of your intentions. She'll hear you out. And true to her shallow self, she'll look into your eyes like she meant for herself to be yours. Maybe she'll even allow herself to love you briefly. Yet she will invite you not behind her picket fence.

And deep inside you'll know that someday her steadfast profundity would get the better of her. And then, she'll look through you unmidfully again and walk past you breezily again - as if she walked back into the pages of the classic novel you'd once been engrossed in. And she will silently pride herself on her irrelevance again, and that of yours.

And in stolid abandon, you'll let her go back behind the picket fence - to the realm of un-belonging, where she belongs.

On Beauty, as Substitute for Love.

"Beauty is my hobby."

As she spoke these words, from behind my closed eyes I could feel her soft, nimble fingers and probing eyes examine my face for effects of malign toxins on my skin. There I was, barely 21, on my first trip to Singapore, lying on a comfortable bed in a dark corner of a nondescript little beauty salon in the West Avenue Market of Bukit Batok. I had gone there placing my trust solely on the recommendation of my aunt, and I could see why she adored the little woman who was in love with beauty.

"You have nice skin." she said. "But you're still young, lah." She added, with that expression so characteristic of Singlish. "How old you?" she asked me and I replied. "How old you think I am?" she asked, and still with eyes shut, I tried to picture her face and estimated. "Maybe 27-28." I could imagine the smug smile on her face as she said "No lah, but I will tell you. And I will give you tips."

Over the next couple of hours, as she proceeded to give me a facial massage, efficiently and painlessly stuck needles over designated points on my face, wrapped my face with therapeutic herbs, covered my eyes with a cool vitamin C pack and my face with sweet smelling face pack; she told me her life story. Her husband had abandoned her 10 years ago, for a young Vietnamese girl. And now she was a single mother of a 11 year old son. I tried to picture her face again. Could I have missed a detail while trying to estimate her age? Maybe I should take another good look at her when I open my eyes, I thought.

Through the entire process of the facial treatment, I listened to her talking about her daily beauty routine. She had given up food which caused toxins to accumulate in the body, including most of meat based products, hot spices, what we in India know as "Tamasik" food. "I love my chicken too much to give it up" I mused to myself. She kept giving me "tips": "wash your face with cold rice water every morning and night", "dilute the shampoo you use with water before applying to head" or "don't let the shampoo lather touch the skin of your back or your arms, always wash hair facing down". Though I listened patiently, and quite curiously, I doubted I would ever be so dedicated to my "beauty routine".

Then she said something that caught me off-guard: "I became beautiful after my husband left me." I was 21 and not nearly half as experienced in the matters of love as I am today. But I understood what a heart-break was. It doesn't take much imagination and experience to understand pain; it only requires you to be human. I sensed that even 10 years after being abandoned, this woman was still vulnerable enough to share something so personal with a complete stranger. However, I found her take on loss of love, interesting, to say the least. To me it seemed that she had substituted the pursuit of love in her life, with the pursuit of beauty. I had never before imagined the two things to be comparable even, they operated on different spheres, from where I saw them then.

At the end of the routine, when I finally opened my eyes, she showed me a photo of hers, as she was 10 years back. Could it be! I thought. This woman had lost almost 15 years. She was nearly 40, and now that I could see her with my eyes wide open, I would have bet she was not more than 25, had I not known any better. Gone were the puffy dark patches under the eyes, the slight crow feet and beginning of wrinkles at the corners of the mouth. This could be straight out of the "before-and-after" ads for age control creams. Except, this was real, and was achieved not with a miracle cream but after consistent effort over 10 years.

A few months back when I was suffering from hopeless post-traumatic stress, one of the days while I was crossing a road I found myself wishing for a truck to come and hit me. At a level of mindfulness this shocked me in fact; for even at my worst, I have never been the suicidal kinds. Desperate to save myself from the clutch of those dementors, I got myself an appointment for a facial and hair spa at my favourite salon. By the end of the day, as lame as it may sound, while I looked at my radiant face in the mirror, I was once again convinced that I had reason to live.

When I dress up, I am a different person. Once someone from office even remarked after seeing a photo of me from a party that I had attended the night before, that it was "such a deceptive photo." I laugh it off; for the 'me' in power specs and corporate attire, with no makeup and bed hair that refuses to settle down, is probably more fake than the 'me' in a little black dress, wearing eye makeup and plum lipstick, flirting with a man over a glass of martini, and devising for myself a fake name, identity and phone number to give away to him by the end of the night, simply for the fun of being able to hide behind a face that no one recognizes by the day. I find the shallowness of beauty to be as compelling as the depth of love. Ask any drag-queen and hear them concur with me.

Over the years, the versatility of beauty, has helped me use it as a substitute, albeit only temporarily, for love, hope, happiness and sometimes even truth. When I feel ugly, I get a facial. When I feel unloved, I paint my nails a fiery red. When I feel unwanted, I get a bikini wax. When I doubt myself, I lose those glasses, pluck my eyebrows, wear cat-eye kohl and look straight into the mirror at myself with a fresh resolve. When I am tired of the disappointments in life, I get a head and body massage. When I feel hopeless, I wear my white dress and pearls and the future suddenly turns bright again. When I feel low on confidence, I wear those 3-inch high heels and my esteem stands taller. When I feel charmless, I wear a dainty silk scarf and large sun shades that give me an air of eminence.

You must have heard Desree crooning "love will save the day." Well, I simply can't wait around for love to salvage my days for me.

Beauty, is my saviour.