Pritam's Blog
What Have You Done With Your Life, Why Are You So Proud Of Yourself?
If you ask me, “What have you done with your life, why are you so proud of yourself?” (and someone actually asked me this today), then I must tell you that I once looked straight into the eyes of a girl and told her that she looked ‘exactly like my next girlfriend.’
She is my girlfriend, and as I write this post, she still looks like my next girlfriend. And I haven’t uttered ‘I love You’ even once in all these years… not when I am sober.
I must tell you that extraordinary things have happened in my life, something that everybody wants happening to them, but not everybody is “lucky enough” as I have been.
I must tell you that extraordinary things happened with me not because of any divine intervention, but because it was me who intervened in matters of my life which people usually entrusted on luck. I ‘shamelessly’ asked people to help me when I needed it. And they helped me, most of the times. And miracles happened.
I must tell you that I was held at gunpoint and I bowed down in front of the ones holding the gun, and I didn’t feel bad. I survived. But that’s not why I don’t feel bad even today. I made sure that the two people accompanying me, who were less privileged than I am, are safe too… And that’s why I feel proud of myself.
I must tell you that I left the comforts of the middle-class family I was brought up in, to pursue my dreams of being a writer, something that is unfathomable to the middle-class… I didn’t give up my ambitions just because the world I grew up in was (and still is) patriarchal and orthodox…
I must tell you that I was sexually abused as a kid by a woman, and yet I didn’t become a misogynist…
I must tell you that my birth right to have freedom of speech and expression have been violated multiple times in real life (long before the birth of Facebook where your posts are deleted, and/or you are banned from posting on Facebook), and yet I don’t fear to call a spade a spade…
And I must tell you that in all these 26 years I have lived on this earth, I haven’t sold my soul even once (that’s why my life isn’t even half as comfortable as it should be, I mean, if you consider my upper-middle-class background) …
I must tell you that when I get up every morning, I don’t feel bad about my existence. I don’t feel that I have any regret.
And yet every night (actually early morning, I am insomniac, you see) before I go to sleep, I see a goldfish circling round and round in a fish bowl…