I am sitting in a restaurant after a hectic day of too many stimulations. I learned about tensegrity, mental health initiatives & what is next for them, I learned to make and print zines. I am away from home, in unfamiliar beds, on bought food & generally overwhelmed. I am in a noisy restaurant with tables squished so close together that the leg space would put AirIndia to shame. My medicines have made my eating cycles scary. I don’t feel hungry all day but an hour after I take the medicine I can eat three people’s worth of food. I have to carry a snack wherever I go. My snack is over. I am force-feeding myself prawn curry.
I can hear, over the noise of the music & people talking about sand-mining, a baby crying; Not the normal ‘I may have pooped, I may be hungry too’ crying, but distressed, chocking up, hoarse throat ‘I am in pain’ crying. I hummed a song in my head, so I wouldn’t go up to the baby & offer help. No new parent wants to be told by a co-restaurant-eater how to help their child feel calm & the last thing I want to do is make them feel like I am getting disturbed by the baby. So I stay put. Till I can’t.
For the lack of a better audience, I turn to the guy sitting next to me, whose name I hadn’t yet learned, whose name I don’t still remember, & say that the loud music at the restaurant may be distressing the baby. He asks me to tell the parents. I say, they’ll think I am nosey. They have probably already thought about this. He says “do it anyway” and I do.
Since then, every time I was asked to dance, even when I felt awkward when I was out of words but had to write when I worried about wearing my hair a particular way, I did it anyway. I asked for more money for my work. I asked a question in a meeting full of seniors. I wore pants that are “too young for me”. I am mindful to not encroach on anyone’s rights, freedom & life. But now I have a tiny semblance of a tool to help me not dwell on someone else’s opinion on mine. And it has helped me every time I almost did not write the last few posts, because I did not want people to think a particular way about me, about Mumma, papa, or R, & even when I was sure they would, I did it anyway.