Jalebi Ink

Kinshasa: My Inferno

By Anna Abraham

At 16, one’s life has a tendency to be capricious and unpredictable. I lived in a bustling city, thriving off of the life of its inhabitants, the very dynamic Mumbaikars.  I had just finished my tenth grade ICSE board examination and I had done phenomenally well. I’d gotten into both the schools I had wanted to go to, Ambani and Cathedral. I had a bunch of friends I loved and an amazing life.  Everything had started to fall into place. But as I’ve realized, Lady Fortune had other ideas. I have a feeling that the minute my life started going well, she decided to send me right back to hell. She did. Only we know it as the Democratic Republic of Congo.

My father had left for DRC in February, and we spent 6 months in Mumbai while he lived in Africa. It was weird without him but I didn’t really notice his absence. Don’t get me wrong, I missed him, but I was so caught up in preparing for my board exams and celebrating the end of 10th that I didn’t have the time to spend hours missing him. I knew I would join him in Congo in July, but the fact that I was leaving for Africa never really set in until I was in the car on my way to the airport, saying goodbye to the city I loved. As the realization dawned, the tears sprung. I bawled my eyes out on the flights (there isn’t a direct flight to Kinshasa, DRC). It wasn’t very mature, but what’s a girl got to do to get a bit of leeway around here?

But landing in Kinshasa was by far one of the most horrific experiences I have ever had, and I have had a handful thus far.  Stepping off the flight steps, I was greeted by the most ancient airport. Its walls were cracked and crumbling, and it did not look like any international terminal I’ve ever seen. Customs was worse. The officials seized our passports, and then refused to return mine to me, instead handing my father another Indian MAN’S passport, claiming it was mine. It took us five whole minutes to convince them that the man in the picture wasn’t me. They didn’t stop there. They started ushering us towards a door, and my naïve mind thought we were being moved to a waiting area. The waiting area turned out to be a flight that would take us back to India. I was being deported, and I hadn’t even been to the actual country yet!

Luckily, my father was able to get us out of the situation, and we were on our way to what would now be referred to as home. The road to the main city was barely even that. It could be classified as a super wide dirt track at best. There were crazy people running across. Now this might sound a little racist, but the sheer number of black people scared me. It took me by surprise. I had lived in Brazil a few years ago, but I wasn’t accustomed to seeing so many Africans all together, up close and personal. And seeing them run across dirt roads like headless chickens as my driver tried to avoid hitting them as well as he could after spending approximately 20 hours in planes and airports was not the start I had expected. I honestly thought I had landed in some sort of uncivilized madhouse.

Once we entered town, I started calming down. The roads were amazing. We went to the loveliest Italian joint for lunch, and ordered the most delicious handmade pepperoni pizza. Things started looking up from there on in. We hit a couple of shopping markets before going home. The last one we went to was an Indian market called GG Mart. As we dragged the shopping cart around, I went over to the drink section when something caught my eye. On the shelf to the left were a few bottles of Thums Up. And as I picked it up, the cold bottle firm in my grasp, the taste swelling in my mouth even though I hadn’t uncapped it, I knew I would be fine.

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A Moving Experience

By Khadija Khan

It was probably last year in the month of November that our school took us to Shanti Avedna Sadan for the Outreach Program. Shanti Avedna Sadan is a home for elderly cancer patients and most of the patients there have no hope of living for more than a few months to say the most.  To be very honest, I was kind of skeptical about going there in the beginning. I knew I would see some tragic stuff that would be burned in the back of my mind for life. But this wasn’t at all what happened.

When we reached there early morning at about 8am, we were greeted by a bunch of cheerful nuns. When we started moving around the ward, I saw many people groaning with pain. I remember this lady in particular, I can’t seem to forget the way that poor thing was howling in pain. We walked further ahead and saw an 11 year old child! He was younger than me and he had lymphatic cancer! I wondered how he would feel despite of knowing that children his age were outside playing and he was lying in a cancer ward, so weak and frail with most of his hair gone due to chemotherapy. We saw him sleeping. I still think about that child sometimes. I don’t even know if he’s still alive or not.

Later I interacted with a few elderly men there and I must admit I was wooed by their lively spirit. They were all so vivacious. So full of life! No different from you and me. I got down to discussing Bollywood with them. Their eyes twinkled every time they talked about Amitabh Bachhan’s movies. But unfortunately they weren’t that keen to talk about my favourite actor, Shahrukh Khan.

I asked one kind old man a rather personal question in the absence of my teacher. I asked him how he ended up here and he told me, “When my family found out that I had cancer they abandoned me. Then one of my close friends told me about this place and I came here. Now these people are my family.” He also said, “Last week the chap who was in the bed next to mine passed away. Incidents like that are very frequent here. It leaves us stunned in silence for a day or two and after that we act like it never happened. Because to be honest with you, I know I could be next in line. So why waste my timing thinking? I’ve chosen to live these last few days of my life as happily as I can.”

That old man filled me with so much hope. I was infused with a desire to live life like I’ve lived before.

He also asked me and my friends to sing for him and we all did. Though we are not a very good bunch of singers, he applauded us with such genuine pleasure that it felt like we were no less than Lata Mangeshkars of Loreto Convent.

We also met a lady battling with bone cancer and she showed us a picture of hers taken a few years back. Which she had placed very carefully like it was some cherished trophy, on her bedside table. She told us that she was an airhostess back in those days. And there’s no denying the fact that she looked absolutely stunning in that picture. Nothing like her current self.

She had tears in her eyes when we leaving. In fact, most people there did.

A few days later our class teacher told us that the gentleman we had sung for (the one whose family abandoned him) passed away last night. I swallowed a lump in my throat, fought my tears and decided never to forget what he told me. “Live like you’ve never lived before, and fight all the obstacles that come your way.”

It was probably last year in the month of November that our school took us to Shanti Avedna Sadan for the Outreach Program.

Shanti Avedna Sadan is a home for elderly cancer patients and most of the patients there have no hope of living for more than a few months to say the most.  To be very honest, I was kind of skeptical about going there in the beginning. I knew I would see some tragic stuff that would be burned in the back of my mind for life. But this wasn’t at all what happened.
When we reached there early morning at about 8am, we were greeted by a bunch of cheerful nuns. When we started moving around the ward, I saw many people groaning with pain. I remember this lady in particular, I can’t seem to forget the way that poor thing was howling in pain. We walked further ahead and saw an 11 year old child! He was younger than me and he had lymphatic cancer! I wondered how he would feel despite of knowing that children his age were outside playing and he was lying in a cancer ward, so weak and frail with most of his hair gone due to chemotherapy. We saw him sleeping. I still think about that child sometimes. I don’t even know if he’s still alive or not.  Later I interacted with a few elderly men there and I must admit I was wooed by their lively spirit. They were all so vivacious. So full of life! No different from you and me. I got down to discussing Bollywood with them. Their eyes twinkled every time they talked about Amitabh Bachhan’s movies. But unfortunately they weren’t that keen to talk about my favourite actor, Shahrukh Khan.

I asked one kind old man a rather personal question in the absence of my teacher. I asked him how he ended up here and he told me, “When my family found out that I had cancer they abandoned me. Then one of my close friends told me about this place and I came here. Now these people are my family.” He also said, “Last week the chap who was in the bed next to mine passed away. Incidents like that are very frequent here. It leaves us stunned in silence for a day or two and after that we act like it never happened. Because to be honest with you, I know I could be next in line. So why waste my timing thinking? I’ve chosen to live these last few days of my life as happily as I can.”That old man filled me with so much hope. I was infused with a desire to live life like I’ve lived before.He also asked me and my friends to sing for him and we all did. Though we are not a very good bunch of singers, he applauded us with such genuine pleasure that it felt like we were no less than Lata Mangeshkars of Loreto Convent.

We also met a lady battling with bone cancer and she showed us a picture of hers taken a few years back. Which she had placed very carefully like it was some cherished trophy, on her bedside table. She told us that she was an airhostess back in those days. And there’s no denying the fact that she looked absolutely stunning in that picture. Nothing like her current self.
She had tears in her eyes when we leaving. In fact, most people there did.
A few days later our class teacher told us that the gentleman we had sung for (the one whose family abandoned him) passed away last night. I swallowed a lump in my throat, fought my tears and decided never to forget what he told me. “Live like you’ve never lived before, and fight all the obstacles that come your way.”

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Not Fitting In

By Anayasha Dalia, 17

“Oh, Please! Try once… taking just one puff won’t make a lot of difference! It won’t kill you!” he says. He sits opposite me with his group of friends, all smoking away to glory. His eyes are fixated on me, waiting for a response. And my mind is filled with a million thoughts…

You know the time when we were all kids and promised to live up to stay sober all our lives? We promise to live up to the expectations of our parents. Promise to make sure that our actions or words will never affect them for the worst. But,
Welcome Teenage Years, and all of it goes out of the window! We don’t do it intentionally. Oh, no! We still love our parents. We just crave for some freedom… freedom to do things our way, to make our own decisions, to learn from our own mistakes. And our parents, angels that they are, give us that freedom. To help us grow, understand and learn. That’s not where the problem lies…  it is when people start to misuse the given freedom. Fall under peer pressure. The need to fit in or to not be left behind. To not be a new target of mockery.

But, I believe in myself. Believe in the values and ethics inculcated in me. I remember the promise to stay sober and never let me parents or anybody who believes in me, down. Believe that there are a group of people out there, who know how to have fun without causing harm to themselves.

To prove my point, I give a slight shake of head and walk out of the room bidding farewell to the cigarette, him and his group of friends.  I don’t need to fit in, I’ll stand out!

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Follow Your Dreams

By Zoe Subbiah, 16

I’ve been dancing for three years now. It hasn’t always been easy. Dancing is a lot of hard work but it’s worth it. I’m now on a Basic Intermediate Level. Dancing is my life and everything I think about but my parents don’t approve. Journalism is my back up option if dancing doesn’t work out. My parents insist I focus on journalism instead. But how will I know if I don’t try first? They don’t understand the passion I have for dancing. It dominates my heart and I just NEED to dance. I’ve fought with my parents a lot about it but I am going to try before I give up and follow what my head says instead of what my heart does. For all I know, I may become a great dancer and choreographer. I just have to try.

Our time on earth is limited. We aren’t going to live forever. We can’t waste our time living somebody else’s life. Don’t live by the thoughts and opinions of others. Follow your heart, your dreams, your intuition. When you give up your dreams, a piece of you dies. Only you know what you want to make of your life, everything else is secondary.

I believe when you love something, you should go for it. If you follow your heart and do what you love, success will follow.

Parents sometimes tell us “You can follow your dreams someday. This is more important”

When is ‘someday’? We never know when we are going to die. There is no guarantee that we will have a tomorrow where we can follow our dreams.

They tell us we’ll be in a fix if it doesn’t work out.

How do we know if it’s going to work out or not if we don’t risk it? We just have to have faith and leap in, sometimes.

Some say it’s impossible.

If we love it that much, I think we can MAKE it possible. Nobody can stop you from following your dreams except yourself.

Everybody says that only a lucky few make it.

Those “lucky” ones made it because they followed their hearts and DID something about it. They didn’t let others’ opinions dominate their heart.

There’s always that nagging feeling that we’re going to fail somehow.

So what if you fail a couple of times? Not everybody is perfect. Failure truly is the stepping stone to success and we can’t let that fear rule our lives.

Following our dreams may be scary sometimes, because we never know what’s going to happen. But in the end, nothing is more gratifying than following your dreams and knowing that you MADE it. It may be a lot of hard work but all we can do is be true to ourselves and success will come through our passion.

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Reclaim Our Bodies

By Khadija Khan, 14

Nowadays most teenagers are unhappy with their body. Especially girls. They think they are fat and that being thin is the only way to live a happy life. And to be honest, it’s not really their fault. All around them flawless women with size zero figures are being glorified.  In every movie the heroes and heroines are perfectly fit. All fashion magazines are filled with perfectly photoshopped pictures of models. In other words, their perception of beauty is distorted. They think being anorexic is being cool whereas it’s not even remotely cool. In fact, disgusting is the word I would use.

The other day I was sitting in my dentist’s waiting room so I started browsing through the magazines. Glancing through the pages of Vogue, Femina, Elle, and Seventeen all I saw were advertisements emphasizing on the NEED to lose weight,anoerexic models pouting away and articles on weight loss. These glossy fashion magazines are shouting out to everyone that, “If you are a teensy weensy bit pudgy or healthy then something is wrong with you!”

Some time back I was reading this article on the internet. It was aimed at making young girls loving their bodies. And this was the advertisement which was displaying at the side of that article:

Ironic much?

You go to any teenager’s birthday party and you will see that even though the cake is deliciously rich, creamy and oozing with oodles and oodles of the finest chocolate, they won’t eat it! Well most of them will just pick at it and won’t eat more than a spoonful. This is because today’s youth has a notion that they can get that perfect figure just by dieting.

A few of my friends skip their meals and hence they can’t concentrate on their studies or extra curricular activities. Everyone wants a perfect body. Just like the models in the magazines.

What these teens don’t realize is that they can eat anything at this age and not get fat because all the energy that the food gives us is used up in the process of growing up. This, as most of us know is called metabolism. Yet, these girls starve themselves to death making their body angry. The body gets irritated when it doesn’t get the nutrients and vitamins that it requires. You will vomit. You will puke. You will lose all your hair and you will eventually end up an anorexic which is disgusting like I mentioned earlier. Why should you suffer so much for a little puppy fat that’s going to bid you goodbye (naturally) in a few years?

A very talented writer’s perception about losing weight is this: Imagine that in front of you is a castle. That’s where you want to be. But surrounding that castle is a moat, full of piranha. The only way to get into Perfect Abs Castle is to swim across the moat and let the little fish painfully chew off hunks of fat. The real situation is exactly like that, only the swim will take years.

Don’t you all agree?

I really hope the girls who find themselves in a similar situation take my advice and eat that delicious piece of cake now. Because 20 years from now when they’ll still want to binge on delicious cake they won’t be able to do it because middle aged people don’t have a lot of metabolism taking place in their bodies and they’ll regret the fact that they didn’t eat it.

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I Feel Left Out

By Khadija Khan, 14

Today I am very depressed and gloomy because I was made fun of when I went for tuitions.

I recently joined these tuitions. I have only been there thrice so I hardly know anyone there. I feel very left out. Whenever I try to talk to the popular girls, they’re always busy with the popular boys. When I try to talk to the quite and shy girls, they are always busy with their books.

The popular clique has been giving me a lot of trouble lately. I try to laugh it off. But later, when I think about it I feel a lump in my throat. These popular kids always laugh at my name. I know it’s unique and hard to pronounce and I have always felt very special about my name until now. They say things about me and I overhear them sometimes.

But what happened today was the worst. Today when the class got over at 7 in the evening, I had put my sunglasses over my head so that my hair doesn’t fly all around when I open the windows of my car. I saw one of the popular girls staring at my sunglasses and sniggering. Then she told another one of her friends and then her friend said, “Khadija it’s evening and you’re wearing sunglasses.” I didn’t see the need to explain the reason to them so I just replied, “It’s style. You won’t understand.” And then I left from there.

It took me a few hours to realize how silly I had been. And I’m sure that these people find me weird and think I am a snooty show-off. I never wanted this to happen. I wanted to be really nice to them even if they made fun of me on a daily basis. Now the next time I go to class I’ll feel worse than ever and these people will laugh at me even harder.

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Gender Bias In A Temple

By Parina Muchhala, 11

Recently, I had gone to Shri Nathdwara, or Srinathji, as it is popularly known. We were very lucky there was not much rush, i.e. 1/10 of the everyday rush. I had a very good darshan and we were all very happy, except for one thing. The police officials there didn’t treat women as equals. The men were given priority. The women were considered secondary. I realized this when I was in the female row at the temple with my mother. All the VIPs  were allowed to get in first. Then they opened the gates of the men – and they were kept open for 15 mins to 20 mins. It was only after half an hour that the women, who were squashing, pushing, hitting to go in first, were allowed to enter. Also, inside the temple those pandits were hitting everyone. Each lady pushed the other to catch a glimpse of Lord Srinathji. And, the ladies were very strong. They pushed really hard. We hardly had a second to pray before we were pushed out by the rushing crowd. For the other seven darshans, I decided to go in the men’s line with my father. I knew it was wrong, but women were not treated well. The officials spoke very rudely to them. And the other darshans of mine were not spoiled. I was astonished. How can gender-bias exist in God’s temple?