I'll try to make this short.
Adopted, sexually abused as a child, bipolar (although my family says my prescribed medication is just like a multi-vitamin, denial is beautiful).
I live in India. I do NOT fit in.
Since I was 5, I was always different. I started to dye my hair at age 12 and I never did anything that Indian kids my age were doing. While they spoke broken English with a hideous accent (it's true) I revelled in classic English Literature and luckily linguistically I'm not culturally affected.
My mother is a Zoroastrian and she sent me to a Parsi school which was in a Parsi colony because my sister had attended it. I HATED it (my sister did too but she didn't say anything to mum).
The (Parsi) teachers, (Parsi) students were wretched. They are *very* racist and because I wasn't Parsi (like I would ever want anything to do with their community after all I've been through and honestly, I was happy with my beliefs on religion) I wasn't allowed to do certain things.
So Parsis were allowed to do everything and the rest of us were beneath them-even though we were greater in number.
I told my mother on SEVERAL occasions that I wanted to change schools. Did she listen no. I don't regret a thing I did there. I fought back, and I did it well.
If you ask her now, she says she didn't listen to me because she thought I was just "doing what kids do, sometimes they don't like their school so, its a phase". Thank you, mum.
I wanted to pursue music ever since I was 7, I fought and fought with my mother to find me a suitable western music teacher-but I only found ridiculous ones who's idea of "hard rock" was basically backstreet boys and the way they taught music was warped. I wanted to learn to read and write music, compose it, not just ask them to teach me songs and be stuck with those few for the rest of my life.
At age 11, I developed an immense interest in the keyboard and I began to write songs. I remember I read an advert at my school for a company that ran keyboard classes for kids. My mum ignored me. I tried for years. When I was 15, I wanted to move to London to study music and pursue what had been my passion for several years.
She of course said no, and to pacify me sent me to a dreadful Cambridge affiliated school in India. (And as we know, a lot of corruption is in India and hence it wasn't as advertised)
Our entire class failed an exam thanks to our teacher forgetting to send our forms. When questioned the principal simply said "He had family problems". EXCUSE ME-WHAT?
I struggled to get out of that school.
I then decided to let go of my music dream, and yes, I still cry when I look back at what could have been. Even if I never made it, I would have tried.
I took up Fashion Styling at an Italian institute in India and that failed too.
The teachers kept leaving the institute, our subjects were all flawed. We were playing with vegetable printing (you know-in kindergarten, you make a shape in a potato, dip it in paint and use it as a stamp). Our Italian teacher was horrified to know that after a year we still learnt nothing.
I landed up in the ICU thanks to a failed suicide attempt.
I was depressed for about 9 months and it was wretched.
I decided to give music another shot. I'd grown an interest in Opera when I was 17 and finding an opera teacher in India (of all places) is impossible. I did find a teacher who mum put me up with to pacify me as always. He became infatuated with me and then kept harassing me. The institute sent another teacher who had this bizarre accent. Really, how can you sing English songs with an accent like this:
clazzze yuhor syes, guuive mee youhor haaand (close your eyes, give me your hand)
Needless to say I was like "wtf", horrified. So that ended well.
I gave in and joined a French fashion institute in India and although the course is great. I HATE designing. I N.E.V.E.R wanted to design.
Oh and I'd already started to working as a freelance fashion journalist. I got lucky that way. But then I came to realise how not so great India's fashion week is.
Designers are treated like trash. I was paid basically to be all rosy to everybody. So my job's pretty easy. Just make a list of (positive) adjectives, use them in sentences and a runway report is done. Brilliant, right?
I can't be a fashion journalist because Indian magazines suck. Vogue/Grazia/Elle are just....they're so slow on fashion. And I can't change the entire population, everything circles around "Bollywood" (hate that word) and it's not my cup of tea.
I hate designing but I can't be a designer because designers in India die.
Nobody has ever heard of avant-garde and people here would rather have a salwar kameez than let a designer freely express themselves.
As for the art festival here- how much of black and white realism photography can you display? Paintings of "Bollywood" stars in pop-art. They're just recycling old material.
Is this country so devoid of talent?
Now my father has retired and we don't exactly get along. I remember I came clean to him once and I made myself vulnerable. He was dick. A total man. And now I just keep away but he's around thanks to his retirement. And he doesn't get off his arse for anything. Not to answer the phone, nothing. And he yells at me. And he abuses the maids. And he's rude. And he's judgmental. And he's racist. And he farts at the table. Quite a catch for mum, eh?
Mum says they'll send me to London (for a course in fashion journalism which again, no course in India-only 'journalism' and 'fashion design' as separates) but honestly I don't believe it. I'd rather just not break under the false impression of freedom in the near future.
I do not like living with them but I have no choice.
With the over population in India, getting a job is hard. And I have no future here. Whatever I am vaguely qualified for is not important, doesn't pay and there's no scope.
Oh and I've met several fashion journalists who write in English but can't speak it. And yes, they don't write as well. I don't think I'm ace but I certainly have a larger vocabulary.
To top it off I can't think of men anymore after the whole vulnerable thing with the father. I'm pansexual but I'm no longer free to date anybody. My parents are almost inscestious or maybe I'm sick minded. I don't like anything inside of me. And I'm miserable. I'm stuck with them. Till I die.
I'm just stuck. Stuck. | |
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