Last Words.

Very Yesterday, I happened to be in a situation where I thought to myself, what would happen if I were to stop breathing now? Well, until I got to the thirteenth day of not existing on this earth as a human, I was disappointed with myself and with the people around me. Laying down, breathing, I thought to myself wasn't life after death supposed to be a release? Wasn't life on earth not disappointing and weird enough?

My last words to ketaki would have been "Do it if you feel so.", and to my mother would have been a simple thumbs up over the dramatic series of life at the Nair Household. Being the rude person that I am, I have no right to complain about my last words, and that is why I don't! Well, the start of this blog is heartfelt and seems rather like an apology instead, but it's not.

What I realized on the thirteenth day of my imaginary death is that it was a wise decision to tell ketaki to just do it, or else she would have slogged herself in corporate, and my mother would have simply been the villain in the Nair household serial.

Only in 20 legit years + 1 delusional year of living, I have seen 20+ people spending 50+ years without speaking what they exactly have in their brains or minds or hearts. Now I would want to listen and respect and be grateful for stories from 100 years ago, when the world wasn't liberal, women did not have the right to speak or stand for themselves, and women had to fight for what we have today. Not today though, It's a choice. It's about the choice one makes. Even today, I mean okay you did not think of doing it for the past several years? Why not today? Why not now?

I respect my Nani (Maternal - Grand Mother) for the patience of 50 years of marriage, with the most kind-hearted man known to me that is my Nanu (Maternal - Grand Father) but at the same time, I have a million questions to ask my Dadi ( Paternal - Grand Mother) about her struggles to even get a few respectful looks today, even though both come from the same generation.

Do not tell me it was because of the men, because it wasn't like both of them had a choice of their own. Now again, I understand, it wouldn't be valuable to talk about the endless joy of love explained by aged mothers. Maybe it will be valued when I'm in my 40s, which is again for whole another blog.

Okay? If what's written above is the case then I would also want to justify a story I said the other day. It went like.....

When asked a man waiting outside the delivery room, who was soon expecting a child

"What do you think, A girl or a boy?"

The man answered with tears in his eyes, "A girl"

Now after years of struggle to abolish 'Naari-hatya' i.e Killing of the girl child, this should have been a moment to be glad, and I did celebrate with a teary eye.

But, Continuation:-

The man apparently took a dramatic pause and said "I want to have an elder sister to my next child so that she will take care of them like a mother." To be fair, It's not that, men don't care, neither do I think women always care. But the point is who are you to expect something from somebody before they are born, or even after they are born? Yes, you might have birthed them, but again it wasn't by their permission that you did that.

It's not fair to have pre-made expectations from someone and set boundaries and reduce them to the finite lines of your choices. Nobody is to live up to your expectations. It would be totally different case, about the people who leave other people who are incapable of setting things for their own.

For example, You don't birth to a baby and leave it on the streets. It either doesn't birth or either face what you have done, because then you destroy somebody, & that never does good. You do not give them hope in life and then leave them to die, the same way you do not decide in the middle of the way to leave because you are tired. You could have just not given hope in the first place or built expectations.

"Don't let your mistakes define somebody else's life."

Feeling homesick, grateful, loving somebody, apart from being kind or humanity limits should be a choice.

Out of the limits, yes your parents birth you, yes grandparents love you, yes siblings adore you, yes friends are always there for you, yes strangers will help you, and yes, be kind to them, love them, and adore them back because it is this very give-take thing to do but the same love and feelings should not convert itself into selfless and selfish limits of owing somebody everything.

One's last words will hurt the people left back on earth, and you go on, and the cycle repeats. Now I will have a lot of adults telling me, only if they were selfish enough to do all of the above mentioned, I would not have what I have right now and you know many other things. Not breathing maybe. Cool, I understand you, I want to, I am trying so hard. But I would like to ask them to pause and think about the last thing they did not do, because somebody would not have liked it, accepted it, or loved it if you would have proceeded with it. Now, was it worth giving up? How many people remember you giving up?

You know if somebody, anybody, maybe your mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, friend, or ex-lover remembers you giving up and has regard for it, then maybe to an extent, I would like to say fair enough. But what about it? What are you doing with these considerations and regards?

Self-love should not be an insult even if you say it to somebody or anybody says it to you and if that triggers you or anybody, you are on the wrong boundary.

Undo it, Unlove it, Unlearn it, Grow out of it, say what you want, and breathe like it's the last one. Because as they say on the thirteenth day of your death, as you leave for the afterlife you don't want to take the baggage of all the things you could have done, said, or lived, right? Until Next time,

XOXO, Aarya.