This nervous attempt at penning down actual sentiment may be triggered by newly prescribed hormone medication, or by a recent barrage of love that I was fortunate to receive.
Telephonic (Whatsapp-video-call-ic) recollections of a neighbor aunty from 20 years ago, of a geeky, over active, over achieving, clumsy, loud, mischievous 9 year old, turned into a circus tale of feeding her two kids and me everyday after school, the hell we raised, and never really knowing peace. Lovely, kind, and caring as always, along with all the progress she had made as a parent who truly let her kids follow their dreams, she asked me, "Janu paapa...is there someone who calls you kanmani?". It took a moment before I comprehended what the question meant.
Twenty years ago, on one of her flights of fantasy, this lady who loved me so, told me, paapa your name means kanmani. One day, there will be a nice Malayali/Tamil boy who will call you kanmani, and you'll know. I hope you'll remember me then. Why the linguistic specification? Her favorite thing about herself is that she comes from both. She claims to have lived in malayalam and loved in Tamil, I think her senthamizh speaking husband would agree!
I asked her if it was enough that I called myself kanmani. It is true what they say about mothers tearing up. I believe we haven't been genetically coded to withstand that.
After a brief hiatus from being able to recognize a stimulus or having an appropos response to it, I have been attempting to shock my system with an artificially induced overload of emotions. All behind the safety of a locked door, ofcourse. In other words I've been attempting to 'Chicken Soup for the Soul' myself. After one too many accounts of torrential emotional experiences (of strangers), I am at a loss. For words, emotions, facial expressions, what have you.
Though very scarcely, I did feel a pang of longing, or a pang from not truly belonging.
Would it indubitably ruin everything I've been saying till now if I said that's when I realized the power of the content we consume? Is it nihilism or a lack of faith in humanity or heartless if I re-realized for the umpteenth time that I definitely miss the casual intimacy, I may miss the stability, I may miss the carefree companionship, of being in a committed relationship, but not much else? My memories did make an attempt to paint only the rosy pictures from the past, but I'm not that easily fooled, atleast not for long.
Is it a symptom or some kind of urban sadness, that I yearn for the fiery, impossibly fused relationships from the myths that I read, but also cannot realistically fathom having that with an actual mortal? Maybe I'm not one person's kanmani, but many, across this speck in time that's a human lifespan? Maybe if we pieced together all the love we dispensed, it would make for a mythical tale.
For now, it is enough for me that I am my kanmani.
Here's counting down days till the hormone meds are done!
Tara
