I have always been a summer person. I have always loved wearing just boxers on an April evening, a book in my hand, a pencil between my ears, pretending to be Elio from Call me by your name. I have always loved to be the one to collect newspapers from outside the gate, and the sun is already up there. I have always loved how my room fills with light even if I close the curtains, to dance myself off. I have always loved coming home after playing or going out, and then opening the refrigerator to find the water bottles my Mother kept there.
She’s not here now. Nobody’s here now. I still yearn for the summers I spent at home as I wake myself up on another cold, chilly December morning. As I pluck out weeds from the plant pots. I let some of them live a day or two, I’m kind like that. Chuckles. But, Rahel, this one is not about cold chilly December mornings or my mother’s water bottles.
It’s about my bus ride back from work. How the view through the side glass slowly changes from green country side to city lights. How the traffic gets crowded and crowded as we move along. How I can see the big ball of fire completely at the beginning of the journey, and slowly tall buildings start to block my view. And that only remains is different shades of orange and red spread across the sky. I rush back as soon as I get off from bus to catch the view from the terrace of my room. Rahel, I’m not much of a religious person these days, but you gotta admit the palette of whoever made this stuff.
Nevertheless, these bus rides always make me sad. Always leaves a void inside me that only gets filled once I reach my room. I have been trying to find the reason for the past two months. During these 30 minutes, I think I’m the most miserable man in this city.
Everything makes me sad. The black sweatshirt that the IT guy who sits in front of me wears every day. The cracking sound that the window glass makes once whenever the bus goes over a hump. Vast empty green fields. Clothes spread out to dry on the balconies of huge residential complexes. Empty houses. Cows. Loud horns. Empty restaurants. Liquor shops. Petrol pumps. Metro rail construction. The old telephone exchange building. Empty boats parked beside the lake. Graveyard beside the sewage treatment plant. Butcher shops. Men with cigarettes in front of condiment shops.
So eventually I find myself tripping off into sadness every day during this journey. Most days, I try my best, with the very little amount of energy I have left after work, to save myself from falling into spirals. But Rahel, somedays, somedays I feel like, maybe I don’t deserve to be saved. Maybe I don’t deserve to be at peace. Maybe I deserve to be shredded to pieces passing through this black hole of a 30-minute bus journey.
So I let myself go. Like the time when I went to Varanasi and was flying a kite, and I just cut the thread off just to see how far it’ll go? Will it fall into the middle of the Ganges? Ironic when you think about sometimes how I feel dead inside. Spread my ashes in the Ganges already. Except I don’t have the will to go up like the kite. I just want to crash-land myself somewhere and be put to sleep forever.
I can hear quiet help cries from inside my heart. I can hear myself cry, “Mayday Mayday!”. But I close my eyes and pretend like I’ve heard nothing. As I crashland myself slowly. Through every decision, I’ve ever taken in my life. Through the people I’ve loved, and who have loved me. Breaking through my piggybank of memories, Happy and sad ones. Tearing apart my archives of nostalgia. Yes, I get hurt inside and outside after every bus journey.
Thanks to this process I feel like I am reborn every day. I don't have to remind myself that we don't have forever. I don't have to remind myself to feel as much joy while I'm here. And most importantly, I don't have to remind myself to hold on to the tiny pieces of details that make me who I am.
I also wanted to let you know that I started reading poetry after the conversation we had last week. When you pointed out that People like art because it shows the passage of humans on earth. Poetry and art exist for humans to understand and express their feelings better.
I went to the bookstore and sat there for three hours in the poetry session. Picked a few random books and went to the park. I lay down under the tree, and read Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
“Come my friends
Tis not too late to seek a newer world
For my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset
To strive, to seek, and to find.”
Sayonara.
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