True Blackmail

It seemed so senseless to conceptualize something in terms of these concocted concepts that my mother held so very dear- tradition and culture. But now I am starting to realize the eventual truth that lays within them. Honour and duty, love and loyalty- all those things that my mother would talk about. All the things that my father would scoff at seems like the holy grail that I have been seeking. To find my roots, I did not have to return to my homeland, land of my great grand mother; rather it was here next to me. Standing on my veranda watching the jasmine blossoms, where the poetic ideals that I once professed were born. But the poems were created to fill the gaps and the holes that exited before this day.

I never really understood why I always wanted to cry when I saw those movies. Especially when people’s circumstances were beyond their control. Especially when those people reminded me of my mother and what she has been through. The chains of circumstances are the reasons why I am sitting here creating what I think to be a master piece. Yet if the tides of fate had decided other wise, I would have been on the streets of Chennai begging for my next meal. But the class and caste that I was born into were decided by entities that were beyond my control and thus here I am.

THEY all have notions of some form of superiority, whether it be class or caste or just plain and simple beauty or colour. Yes there are times when I espouse such unruly thoughts, but those are far and few in-between. The other and the marginalized, I know quite well; even amongst my own, I stand outside the bosom of comforts, because I belong to the other. Never really being able to acknowledge the realities of belonging and participating. But those are restrictions and chains that I have used to tie myself, through self-deprecating antiquated thoughts of unworthiness. These thoughts are the reason why I am so bound within my concocted dreams of utopia. To fall madly in love and have the life that I deserve with the person that I choose are things that I deserve but will never go for, since I am unworthy and unequipped.