There are times in your life which are, for want of a better word, utterly BLAARGH. The feckless senselessness of that word sums it up - a mad mix of fear, frustration and disbelief. Otherwise known (by me, at least) as 'grey areas,' these are the kind of moments which we should welcome for humanity as a whole, because they help further our advancement by pressing us to think deeper about things. On an individual scale however, they can just feel a bit unfair. Yes, change has to come, but it has a nasty habit of coming all at once so that you suddenly feel as if you're riding The Twister with a desperately-mooing cow behind, looking up your knickers.
Wow, that was almost deep! I have been leafing through our astrology books in yonder C------- while attempting to avoid doing the minimum amount of book-shelving, and apparently the period 2000-4000 is the age of Aquarius, which means we can expect lots of pioneering breakthroughs in the scientific fields, and face up to totally new ways of thinking about things. Or something. The main gist of it seemed to be that it's all going to be about newness and change. I also read that apparently at the age of 19, one enters a Scorpio year. The only real thing that stuck there was it saying that Scorpio years are 'make-or-break' after the over-diplomatic / indecisive Libra years (that's a mix of paraphrasing and quoting, don't sue me, I'm not claiming they're my own words!).
Now, you could dismiss this, fairly correctly, as bollocks. Which year of your life isn't make-or-break, in some way? Nonetheless, that got me thinking quite separately that Scorpio or no, this really has been, and will continue to the end to be, one hell of a year. It might not be over yet, but I still need to do my little Cancerian retrospective, because there's so much to examine.
My eldest sister got married. This should be simple, but puh-LEASE, it's an Indian wedding! The months before went into planning and preparing it like loons, plus my family (second-eldest sister especially) reiterating doubts about sending my sister into such a family as my Jeej's is. The wedding day was a tidal wave of emotion, with my calmness unfortunately evaporating when faced with so many self-repressing females. Typically Moonchild, I gauged the hidden mood (without too much effort, I mean, come on, the bride was my sister too!) and expressed it for those who could not - my mum, my second sister, my sister's best friend. Now, we have to hear about the bust-ups with her hubby every now and again, which are usually sudden and explosive; the bitchiness of her mother-in-law who just wants to control her, her stupid sister-in-law, their collective uselessness. It has become a huge, wearying circus, one which never quite seems to settle down, and so, every now and again, my mum goes into a tizzy as to whether she's going to come and stay with us, or try and divorce him, or something. Good God.
My second eldest sister's getting married. Therefore, we've leapt rapidly into the planning stage with lots of aggro - her angsting about how it's going to be after she's married, reinforcing verbally just how reluctant she is to get married, being depressed and cynical... One minute she's getting huffy over the thought of doing everything for his family herself, the next she's saying vehemently, and venomously, that men are utterly useless and thereby showing us wordlessly that she has decided, angrily, to go along with just everything my mum has fed us about married life - 'Nine times out of ten, the woman has to give in.'
Wonderful. I often feel compelled to ask her, 'Why are you marrying him? One minute you're all cute over him, the next you're reeling off all these problems you're going to have to face.' She too, in a more forceful way than my other sister, is just tiring and cacophonous. I smile before her anti-male rants, because I have a guy who is beyond her imagining - he enjoys cooking and he does it incredibly well! However, the unpleasant air eventually gets to you - not only to me, irritatingly sensitive though I am, but also to my mum. Of course my dad and brother don't have a clue, but they have been part of this stereotype my sister dreads, and so it is not something for them to relate to. Thus it seems my mum will spend her future just worrying about the two of them all the time, both for totally different but intrinsically linked reasons. How ironic. She thought she was teaching us how to face the hard ways of life as an Indian woman, but all she transferred was a curse.
Still, I am wise to this, so there is some hope for me, albeit not very much. During my jaded jags, I break down and feel myself bending to this bleak and loveless view of the world. The world certainly becomes more black-and-white. White becomes oblivion and escape through suicide - or becoming a 'gori,' a full white girl, being disowned by my family and severing all ties with my culture. People can call me a coconut as much as they want, but I don't fucking care, because at least I'm not a hypocrite. I know more than them, and I can see what is going wrong, what is at the root of our fucking problems. I CAN SEE THE FUCKING FUTURE, BITCHES. But they don't want me to able to touch it. Black is be more Asian, join the walking caricatures of .........., fatten Tradition's bloated arse a bit further and forget that I was ever different. But fuck that, I'm a Cancerian. I'm all wrong from the start. I choose colour, I choose the humanitarian approach, I choose cautious optimism and determination. I'd rather be Brikh, British and agnostic / Sikh, not Brindian, pretending to be a Sikh and hypocritical.
I realise I have to thank Mr. Gettings for this in a lot of ways. How he came to be so goddamn perceptive, I do not know. Maybe he isn't, and maybe he's just bold. But, when he proposed that essay title to me, 'Sikhs are natural iconoclasts and freedom fighters. Discuss,' he GAVE ME A CLUE. I couldn't see all the little connections then that I can now. When I looked back on it, I began to wonder how he could have been so smart. I sent him 'Indian Woman,' my angry poem, and he gave me this essay. There was a link there, and it has become the basis of my ideas and birthed something totally new from my head, the way Athene came from Zeus.
The other uncertainty comes from this being the first time that my boyfriend and I have spent so much time apart from one another. It has been bad in the respect that it has brought all my insecurities to the fore. I have a tendency to feel that my problems are unimportant, that I shouldn't trust anyone with them, that I can only rely on myself... This all comes from the 'typically Indian' mindset doled out to me courtesy of my family. Obviously this caused problems with S---, because he wanted me to talk to him and open up. I, however, felt that he was off having a good time, so I didn't need him, and didn't want him to see that I was unhappy. It was like competition - 'who's coping the best?' Ludicrous, but being away from him, and missing his influence made me regress emotionally. Thank God we got over it. It led to us having one of the worst fights we've had in a long time. I've been making him cry too much, and I feel terrible.
Now that that has finished, he tells me about a girl called Emma. He met her on an Oxford open day, they talk from time to time and get on well enough. She broke up with her boyfriend and gave him her number and asked him to call her, etc. etc. I'm not particularly worried, even though he feels worried that she might fancy him. I say that maybe she doesn't have many good guy mates, and that's why she asked you to call her. We Skyped very briefly today, and he said he was still worried about it. I said she was probably too cut up over the split to think of fancying him, and he agreed, but still sounded unsure. So I asked him why he thought she might like him. And he said, she's one of those people, you know, who you don't talk to much, but you still get on really well with whenever you do? A-ha, I thought. I wasn't upset or afraid, or anything. I could see what was going on, it was what had happened to me many times before when I feared I liked A--- or something like that. I warned him my thoughts were 'horrible,' and suggested that perhaps a tiny part of him, which he was reluctant to acknowledge, found her attractive, hence the angsting. This left him even more uncertain, which left me quite sure that it was probably the case.
So how should I feel about this? I'm not necessarily right, but I have a gut instinct for these things and it is zoning right on in. I thought, with a certain grim amusement, that it could only be karam, completing its cycle. I throw up my hands and accept it; I deserve to feel even slightly threatened. However, I don't. This is maybe exactly what I needed, because I have absolute faith in him, more than he may even have in himself, just as he said to me a month or so ago when I feared I would be attracted to A---. Emma is a blessing in disguise, because she may have removed some of my biggest demons. He is not going to cheat, he is not going to leave me. This is a way for him to realise how intensely beautiful he is, so much so that other people besides me can see it. I am glad because I love him. So, so much. If I'm wrong, how Attic-tragic it will be. But I trust, and I believe. With all the pre- and post-nuptial madness around me, I think the universe owes me one.
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