Disclaimer: This is purely a work of fiction, any resemblance to a person living or dead is purely coincidental.
“I should maybe skip my dinner for a few days.” I exclaim to the mirror under whose light I often look for refuge.
As usual, he listens to me patiently and throws back a subtle question, just like a trained and an empathetic therapist. He does not seem to be convinced and goes on to ask “Why do I wish to do so?”
“Oh”, I whisper in a lazy tone and then add “it takes up a lot of my time and I hardly even enjoy the food”
He smiles clumsily and I am able to figure it out as I see my own face getting red out of embarrassment in the reflection. Then he asks for a clarification “Is it really so?”
I immediately get irritated and threw out a lousy rant “I hate it when you interrogate me like this, and especially so after passing on that cringe smile. You seem to have been believing that I understand nothing, but I understand each and everything” I shout so loud, that a few sparrows who were sitting on my window sill, quickly flap their wings and fly away.
But there is no change in your stolid composure, I notice. So, I try to calm myself down. I take a deep breath, raise my eyes and go on to add “I hate you when you do this to me and I will for as long as you are going to be with me.”
You seem to be pleased with my verdict, I am able to figure it out as I see my own image melting inside you. I try to clear my eyes with my left palm and then look back towards you. I notice you still looking out towards me, carrying a generous dose of empathy. Tiny droplets of water now start to fill up my little eyes and with an apologetic tone I say “Thank you for always standing by my side.”
I clear off my eyes as I try to reconcile the thoughts in my own head and then add to fill up the silence “The truth often comes out with such deep interrogation and anything deep is meant to be harsh.”
You seem to have known it all, I can sense it as I see my cheeks swelling. Maybe a reflection of your warmth, under the shadow of which I find my soul cozily resting in.
And then I start to speak “The truth is I don’t want to face the world, I do not want to look at people and more importantly neither do I want them to look back at me.” I start to gasp and retreat back from you as I find a hazy devilish figure appear in front of my eyes.
I try to calm myself down and then look up as I gather the strength to face the devil. The courage seems to have scared the shit out of the devil, I laugh jubilantly to celebrate my victory. I then start to wait for a response. A minute goes by and I do not hear back anything. I start to feel restless and with every passing second I start finding it hard to keep my feet rooted on the floor beneath, where bits of sprouts, strands of thin hair and almond skin are littered haphazardly.
“You cannot run away from the World!!” a meagre response came. I became raged, angry and red after hearing the deep cum shallow words. I felt like kicking back at you and bring out all the rage on the surface. But then I took a deep breath and almost immediately decided to run far away from you, a place where even your most faithful disciple cannot lay an eye upon me.
I get out of my room, and start to walk and before I cross the gate of my building I stop to pick up a flower that lay spread across like grains of rice at one corner of the alley adjoining my room and the world. They always seem to have given me their undivided attention. I try to recall, and so I acknowledge their presence and given my sensual nature I start to use my hands to feel their warmth, nose to take in the fragrance and lastly my lips to pass on a smile, because that is what I know. I keep the flower in the pocket of my shirt, the one on the left side adjoining the heart and continue with my walk.
The road lay stretched in front of me, fluorescent and bright yellow light from the lamps make even the dull concrete and tar shine. Large and dense trees also lay in the sides, something that never enters into the description of a Metro but pardon me it is South Bombay. They stand just behind the lamps, their silhouettes ameliorating the beauty of the night sky. I start to walk slowly. It’s a long walk, people say, but I don’t feel it that way. Maybe, because I enjoy walking, maybe because it leads me through the beautiful streets of Colaba, maybe because it provides me with an impalpable joy, maybe it’s the food that I am about to get at the end or maybe it is the culmination of all the things. Well, I will never know and would not even bother to know because as they say “Ignorance is bliss” and so here is my bliss, ultimate bliss. I pass on a hollow smile and then continue with the walk slowly.
Enjoying my bliss, I see others enjoying theirs and in a fraction of time, I find myself at the junction of the crossing. Crossings are usually the best points of a walk. Why? I have often been asked by people, whenever I have tried to share this trivia with them. Crossings usually hold you up for a while, whether you are walking, driving or rushing away, you need to acknowledge the crossing if you wish to get across. And that acknowledgement calls for slowing down and if you are already slow, it might as well persuade you to pause, even if for a small while. I call them as King’s of the road, you pay your respect to them and then they allow you to cross their kingdom, and it is at times when the respect is not appropriately given, do you hear back about their dread in newspapers, WhatsApp forwards or other hot conversations. I know it’s harsh, but you can’t circumvent the orders of the King.
But this king has often been kind rather than harsh and especially so for walkers. He often helps them come out of their own head or the ones with whom they are walking along with, and gift them with an opportunity to gaze at the road both from right and the left. And if they happen to consciously follow the orders, they might discover something that might wax their bliss multifold. Based on my limited experience, I once noticed a flower coming out from the cemented cracks of the footpath and that gave me a flower high, a high whose fragrance still resides somewhere deep down within me. But not all of this conscious attention carries a jubilant fragrance, some are bleak, dark and heart-rending. But today was different and I am yet to find a word to label it appropriately, so maybe I should take up a paragraph or two and leave onto the one reading it to label.
I saw an old-lady sitting or should I say existing on the edge of the footpath on the tiled entrance of one of the shops whose shutter seems to have been hanging down since aegis, or should I say since COVID? I don’t know, so choose the one that suits and walk along with me. She looked frail, tender, soft like a cotton ball and I am sure if you could lay your hands around her skin, they might crumble and run out of your hands just like water, the intensity I suspect might be even stronger.
Talking of water, I see tiny droplets of water in her eyes. Is she crying? I ask myself and if so, are those tears of joy, sadness, sorrow…….I start to look out for adjectives to satiate the thirst of a writer within me. But none of them convinced my heart enough, well the downside of having a big heart is it never seems to feel satiated. I thought for a little longer, thanks to the King again.
I try to raise my head and look towards the sky, to ask for help from the creator himself. “What do you have to say about her, my dear friend?”, I ask in a denigrative tone.
My eyes are now peeking towards the sky in the hope of getting some nice and crisp reply. And as I look up I see tiny droplets of silver pearls falling down slowly, one drop at a time. I continued to look up and before I could think of anything else, a tiny, quirky pearl fell into my eyes.
I twitched my eyes, took a long breath and relished the pearl and almost immediately made peace with the fact that those tiny droplets of water were just a precious gift of God to her and chortled out loud over my own assumptions that I had been making all this while. Maybe she is a nature lover, I exclaim. And then I start to imagine her as a lady privately enjoying her own bliss, I can see her making an effort to look up to the sky as the very first drop of pearl come knocking down on the surface of concrete and tar.
Perhaps, human hardship, pain, darkness has the capability of taking it all away from an individual capable of breathing but not at all capable of impairing an inch of the layer of humanness.
Oh, I managed to get something poetic out of her face, I cheered myself and started to giggle. The beauty of poetry is that you can use it to celebrate love, grief, pain, desire, yearning and all myriad of human feelings. But what I just saw was anything but poetic, it was just life in its most plain, mean and sublime form. Yes, that is life I try to reconcile, rearranging the facts that were spread out like pieces of puzzle all over my head. “The cost of living”, I have heard someone say once. I took a deep breath again and tried reflecting my own life in the mirror of her suffering or should I say living? And all I could see was my own fortune, pride and some luck. I prayed for her and my own Grandma too, whom I tried to imagine must be resting in her bed.
I walk further down and can now see a dim green light reflecting back the name of the place where I am supposed to meet my friends, sit down and eat my dinner. I cool down and as I am about to take on the last crossing of my walk, I stop and take a deep breath again and finally look around to appreciate the colors of life, wherein a vendor is selling hot Gulab jamuns, while the other is serving everyone with pani-puri and etc. etc.
This crossing happens to be adjacent to a bus stop wherein I see an old man carrying a laptop bag attached to one of his shoulders and waiting quietly for his bus. From his grey hair and big round spectacles I figured out that he might be approaching his retirement soon. Then, I see a lady coming towards him from the other side, carrying a ladies bag on one of her shoulder and a jute bag on the other hand, she is smiling and approaching the old man and from her grey hair and big round spectacles I figure out that she might be approaching her retirement soon as well. She comes close to the old man, exchanges a smile and then exclaims “Aaj aap jaldi aa gaye”, to which the man smiles, waves his head and then pulls them downward facing the road and again chuckles, this time inwardly.
Oh, no wonder I love this city!!