'Cause Pigs can Fly

During a recent conversation, a friend told me that you need to love, you need to be open to love, even if that love leaves you weeping on the floor. Love, like the Hot Priest said in Fleabag, isn't for the weak, is it? Love hurts. Love makes you cruel. It's awful, he said, while we sat there, realising the Hot Priest was choosing God and not Fleabag. But love is that, isn't? Love makes you so vulnerable that you end up being afraid of it. And this love doesn't even need to be romantic. I know that we often talk about love in the context of romance, but as someone who rarely feels this kind of love (and then too, wonders if it's just attraction), I've been vulnerable within the context of other kinds of love. I've had to push myself through the absolute fear that I will wake up one day to the absence of a friend, the loss of a loved one, an unexpected goodbye. It's terrifying, but I guess, this fear is something we need to learn to live with if we want t...

Voting has always been important to me, even though, admittedly, I haven’t always put a lot of thought into the people and parties I was voting for. I don’t think I can blame this on age, although I also feel like no matter who is voted in, they always manage to screw us over, leading to those who voted for them getting criticised and ridiculed. But this post isn’t about politics or elections or voting (although if you are reading this in Sri Lanka before 4 p.m. on the 14th of November, I do urge you to vote). Okay, I lied. This is about voting. Kind of. My uncle, that’s my mother’s brother, lives next door to us. I don’t think they were extremely close growing up, because my mother spent some of her childhood with their father in Panadura while my uncle lived with their mother in Dehiwala. But it is their relationship as adults that I know about, born when my mother was 30 and my uncle 36 (I think). Anyway, most Sri Lankans aren’t affectionate. Parents don’t tell their childre...

I find myself pleading with the universe to give me one easy week. One week where I don't need to think about work and deadlines or promises and obligations or worries and anxieties. Where to-do lists don't matter. Where my phone doesn't ping or ring. A week of peace and quiet where one good thing is followed by another and I don't have to do anything. An easy week. And it feels so selfish, so self-indulgent, doesn't it? I'm one in 8 billion people. Why should the universe show me extra kindness? But I do think that there should be a limit to what a person has to go through. I've dealt with illness and death, with heartbreak of sorts, with disappointment, with anger and hate, with loss of all shapes and sizes. And I'm tired. And I need a break. And I feel like, yes, we've gotten better at talking more honestly about things like loneliness and unhappiness and being unloved or wanting love. We aren't as embarrassed about these flaws or weaknesses o...

My grandmother and I never had an easy or loving relationship. There was always some kind of tension between us, ever since I was small. And as a result, I don’t have many memories with her. I remember going to her house before heading for an elocution class in the area. I remember a few yellow rice lunches at the house that was later sold and demolished. One of my clearest, earliest memories of her is from a few years ago. I was standing outside their house (the one they moved to later on), waiting for my aunt to come to the gate so I could give her something. My grandmother, returning from someplace, stepped out of a three-wheeler. I gave her whatever it was that I had made for them. She turned to go inside the house, but turned back to me and said: “I thought you hated me.” People will tell you to not talk ill of the dead. My grandmother is now dead so I guess I should talk about more pleasant memories. But I don’t think those who are alive should have to make up pleasant memori...

Something I really miss about life is my ability to be by myself. In my 20s (which sounds ridiculous to say, because I was in my 20s just last year), I would spend hours by myself at cafes and restaurants and pubs, eating, drinking, reading, writing, people watching. It wasn't like I was good company. Not particularly liking yourself makes it a bit uncomfortable to spend long stretches of time all alone, with no one to talk to except for the occasional server. And yet, I really liked these hours I had to myself. I liked the sense of just being. Not having to prepare for a conversation. Not having to wait for someone. Not having to be some version of myself. However, somewhere along the way, things changed, and I stopped spending time with myself. Recently, I was to meet some friends and had some time to kill. And so, I went to the place we were to meet and got some reading time in. I had around two hours to myself, and the server made a comment on how my friends were late. I told h...

You know, it used to really piss me off when people said things like "you should choose happiness." It seems ridiculous that I would wallow in bloody unhappiness when I could just easily choose to be happy. I couldn't wake up in the morning and choose how to feel, now could I? But now I'm realising that maybe it's not about that daily choice, but about choosing happiness in the face of certain situations. You look at whatever has happened in your life and ask yourself how you want to feel in life... not about the situation itself, not about how certain things or people made you feel, but about what you want in life. You can choose to be unhappy, hurt, angry, whatever. And sometimes, those feelings right all those wrongs. People realise that they fucked up. That they made you feel like shit. But sometimes they don't. They think that you are being unreasonable. You are expecting too much. You are imagining shit. And in such situations, it's sometimes easier ...

You know, I've spent the past few days/weeks feeling hurt and angry, but also ashamed that I care so much about these things and about people who don't care about me. It felt rather embarrassing to be asking myself why these people didn't care about me. It felt like I had failed somehow. I hadn't been kind enough. I hadn't been nice. Or good. Or friendly. I had failed. But it's not enough to be any of these things, isn't it? Sometimes, people just don't care. And that's okay. Because there are people who are nice to me but whom I don't really care too much about. So if I can do this to others, why was I so bothered when others did it to me? Anyway, while dealing with this hurt and anger and shame, I also felt a sense of guilt. A voice in my head would say: "But what about the people who do care?" And it's true. My hurt over people who didn't care seemed to do a disservice to those who care and love and make me feel like I'm ...

This morning, I tweeted something about two thoughts that have been making me feel all sorts of things lately. One is the fact that Aiya seems to have decided to live abroad, which is fine, but here’s the thing. Children aren’t obligated to take care of their parents. I know this. However, we didn’t grow up in a family where our parents are chucked in a retirement/elders’ home (not that there’s anything wrong with this, but it just isn’t what our family does). I don’t want this for my parents – unless, of course, they choose it for themselves. So with Aiya gone, and my parents having no other children, their care falls on me. Now I don’t mind it, but I’m rather useless and so in the case of an emergency, I feel like I will be of little use to them. I’m worried that I won’t be a good enough daughter, that I won’t be able to take care of them the way they should be. And I’m kind of scared about having to take care of them by myself. Now, people can point out and say that my parents...

I’ve been thinking a lot about the survival of friendships and why some last longer than others. Friendships sometimes feel stifling to me, like the other’s presence shrinks your lungs, while at other times, friendships feel like all the good things: freedom, love, joy, kindness, effortlessness. That kind of friendship, the easy kind, is something I have been blessed to have in life. Remember that moment in Fleabag, when the Hot Priest talks about how scary love is, making it something we don’t want to do alone? Well, love is scary, but I’d also like to point this out: “The world as we know it mostly focuses on how hard love is – all suffering and sacrifice and so on – but no one really speaks about how easy love is when you get it right. Because love is easy when you get it right, when you are given it right.” This was how the ‘Slices of Life by Marianne David’ column began in The Daily Morning last month, and this is something Marianne and I had spoken about before the column mad...

 And so I turned 30.   A few years ago, I was convinced I wouldn’t make it to 30. It didn’t seem like I was destined to live a long life. And I didn’t want to. I have never really thought about my future. I never thought about life ten, fifteen or twenty years from now. I didn’t think about life post retirement. I never planned around old age, like some people seem to do. The closer I got to my 30 th birthday, the more I realised that I was likely to make it to 40. It still felt far away, but it also felt like I would live to see another decade. Anyway, here I am, living the first day of my 30s. Two people asked me this morning if it feels any different. Leaving my 20s, and welcoming my 30s. And I said it doesn’t. There’s no magical element to birthdays. You are still the same person, with the same problems or concerns and the same life. And while I do have those odd moments of realising that I am getting older, I’m actually looking forward to my 30s. I feel like life...