Category: Personal – From a Past Life

#12 Postcard – Choices and the Roads not taken

They say everywhere you go becomes a part of you somehow. But don’t you also leave a bit of your self behind, every place you leave?

They say everywhere you go becomes a part of you somehow. But don’t you also leave a bit of your self behind, every place you leave?

I cannot think of any city I have lived in without feeling that lump in my throat, except Trivandrum. And maybe that comes from the knowledge that Trivandrum is home, it’s where I’ll always go back, and there is no leaving, really.

I’ve lived in Delhi, Georgia, Texas. And there are different, younger versions of myself residing in all these places. I only have to go back to see them.

When I visit Rajiv Chowk, I see the 22 year old me on my way back from visiting Valyamma or Achu Annan, waiting for Dwarka line on the other side of the rail. My backpack is filled with the fish fry Valyamma packed for me, or all the Haldiram’s Achu Annan bought me. In December that kid is preparing to become an IAS officer, in March she’s decided she will do International Relations in JNU, and in 2 years I’d be there for my visa interview at the consulate before I leave for Atlanta.

Years later, when I moved from Atlanta, I was sad. I was leaving behind my grad school friends, a place I had grown to love and that I could see becoming my home, a college that gave me my graduate education, a campus I loved to walk around in, gardens and shops I grew to enjoy visiting. I haven’t gone back, but I know I’ll find that 25 year old kid walking the bridge to Target, smiling mindlessly at dogs and the sunset and the dressed-up women posing at the Memorial gate.

There is comfort in familiarity, and I embrace that fully.

To think that we’re where we are because of choice, chance, and the associated what-if’s I grapple with if I ponder long enough (and I’ve had the privilege of choice for a few years). What if the 22 year old me followed another trail of thought to discover something else, what if I’d stayed in Atlanta and not moved?
But we could spend the rest of our lives playing What If, and then some.

Today I was walking back from the Indian grocery store, and I realized I’m growing comfortable here as well, and I’ll miss stuff whenever it is that I leave. I’ll always miss Delhi because it has some of my happiest memories, and that happy innocent kid that I can never go back to. Atlanta, because it gave me so much. Texas, too.

So maybe what we leave behind is our present selves, because we know there’s no way to hold on that comfort even if we want to, except in the form of memories.

But whenever I visit, I know I’ll find those younger versions. They never ask, How are you? Because they aren’t curious, somehow, they’re happy right there.

That Delhi kid still lives somewhere around Karol Bagh. She looks forward to finding out what’s in her evening tiffin, shuffles her way through the loud crowds of CP and reads her yellow Vision IAS notes on the long metro rides home. In Atlanta, Crash Into Me still plays in my room on a dark, rainy evening while Uma hums a tune in the kitchen, putting the chai on.

And maybe we like to think there was something more there, something we missed out on by leaving, that we can’t get back to. That secret, the answer to the what if, only the version that stayed behind knows. Yet when you visit, they only offer you a naughty smile. It’s a secret that will stay there, stay there with that version of you that you left behind. 🙂

Faith – at 25

I needed to believe in something larger than life, larger than anything I knew.
And it’s how I survived. (Also, this article may be summarized as Paalam kadakkuvolam narayana.)

Jab kahi pe kuchi nahi bhi nahi tha
Wahi tha wahi tha
Wahi tha wahi tha.

(When there was nothing,
He was the one,
the only one.)
– Kun Faya Kun (2011)

Time is a great equalizer, maybe the only one?

How do you measure sadness, how much is too much? Do you need to be so sad that you find no joy in life, or is it when you somehow cannot force yourself to smile?

Who has seen the most sorrow? Can a child’s sad story be considered sad enough? Or do you have to be broken after you’ve built that adult threshold for grief?

By the time you’re 25, everyone has had that experience, from life or from people. Everyone has lain on their beds numb one night having cried their eyes out, thinking of how alone they are, of how right those were that left everything and everyone, of how they were brave, of how helpless we are by ourselves. Sat on the floor and bawled at this cruel world of those that hurt us.
Defenceless, alone, but above all, innocent.

That’s the sad, but also the beautiful way we’re all equals at 25. How time is an equalizer, maybe the only one.

This isn’t about being 25 though.

Nobody is more sympathetic to our younger selves than us, I think.

Last month I was sitting on a bench outside DO class when two students approached me, said they’re from the Theology department doing a survey, and asked if I believe in God or a higher power. (My better guess is they were two friends in conversation looking for a random person’s perspective, but yea).

I do, I say.
They ask me their theological question which isn’t relevant in this story, but they took me back to this phase I had almost forgotten I had.

I don’t have an adjective to describe it though, it’s just a vulnerable 19 year old me and an overflowing heart. There’s people, there’s college, there’s lots more people. But they’re somehow neatly tucked away like we belonged in parallel stories, in separate worlds.

Amma and I visited Padmanabha Swamy temple every month back then on my asking. It was the one place where I took peace in return for surrendering all that that plagued me, where I didn’t have to fight and was finally at ease. And I never wanted to leave.

Everything the temple housed was alive to me – oil that dripped to floors from large hanging lamps, flowers from prasadam that were gently squeezed to the back of aunties’ hair, the constant humming breeze to which untrimmed bushes swayed. Alive and sacred. They were glimpses, or rather a beckoning at a life sans desperation, a life that was elusive yet very much existed, that I was allowed to be a part of for the short while that I was there.  

I saw beauty in every person, I could see only kind faces that reflected back at me the serene in passing, as if they all knew why I was there, as if they all said a prayer for me.

I saw old ladies seated on a mandapam reciting chants and that’s when I knew I could sit with them and cry my heart out if only I had learnt those songs that Amma knew. I wondered how they did not break into fits of weeping every time they sang them. I envied what devotion (and in all likelihood old-age) gifted them. They were already at peace and singing a prayer for me and others like me, just like the solitary cobweb floating on a high corner I chanced upon seemed to be.

Every time after going around the whole temple, Amma and I sat on the parapet facing the sands on my asking, watching the towering gopuram in the orange lights.

It was almost always 7pm by then, and I wondered how there were no pictures of that one angle of it bathed in shadows and light against the dark sky, one you can see only from the inside. How whoever constructed it back then saw the quiet splendor that I was looking at, or probably much more.

Of how somebody had known humans would house worries bigger than themselves to look for comfort in things larger than life.

I wondered if there were others who visited the place to absolve of all that taxed them, who marveled at its massiveness and felt the same empty light heartedness I felt then.

I watched a classical recital in the temple once, and I watched others who sat listening – silent, smiling, dissolving. I could only see pointlessness in my suffering then, how what I bore was boundless to my trivial self yet how the world was much bigger than any of it. And yet I knew I’d soon walk past the doors of the temple out into the world only to be overwhelmed by my own reality.
It makes sense that I never wanted to leave.

I remember thinking Gopika was lucky for getting to visit so often, for staying so close by. I wondered what one did if you had no troubles to hand over, if you had no turbulent mind to begin with, and I couldn’t imagine much more. Looking back, what’s funny is I was either not in my elements while I was there, or it was the only place where I was. The lines are blurred and there’s no way I can tell now.

Jab kahi pe kuchi nahi bhi nahi tha,
Wahi tha wahi tha,
Wahi tha wahi tha.
(When there was nothing,
He was the one,
the only one.)

There is a story of how when we were kids my brothers and I played in the sand inside the temple for hours, and I have listened to it being retold as many times as I’ve been there. I once asked Amma about why the place felt so positive, and she mentioned something unappealingly scientific about energy flow, unobstructed pathways and open spaces.

Every time I have gone back, I have still seen magnificence but in the “open spaces, positive energy” way.
I’ve smiled at how I once looked to its huge corridors* and pillars to be a part of me, how I felt lighter with every step I took around the temple, how even the cheli of wet footprints had brought me peace. How I held on to this one place because I found nobody and nothing else to turn to.
I’ve wondered at how young I was, how innocent I was, how I didn’t deserve any of it. Like we all do, I guess.

Yet I’ve not felt the same submission nor seen the surreal there since. I see beautiful faces, sure, but also the regular lives that go on behind them and the chanting. I see pottis and that solitary cobweb on the high corner, but they’re no longer conferring a hurried blessing upon the mortal me. And yet I had seen all of it there, the same way we seek comfort in music or art, but cannot go back once we’ve made it through.
Like the Room of Requirement lending itself only to those that need (ask and you shall receive?).

Faith to me was hope. I needed mine to be larger than life, larger than anything I knew.
It was, and it’s how I survived.

(You’re right, this article may be summarized as Paalam kadakkuvolam narayana).

Because a little faith goes a long way – 2014

* I meant pradakshina paatha but I’ve only ever called it chuttunna vazhi and hence. 

Biennale 2 : Jew Street – Parting

“Am I Lola Milford?” She was watching him intently.

The air was less sultry now, the armpit rivers of smaller diameter.
The streets were empty save for a few shops open in the slow-cooling afternoon heat, adjacent buildings looming on either sides of the narrow road.

They walked slowly in their shade, peeping into antique/curios stores and shops selling overpriced tea and unreasonably large white kurtas for the tourist. This was the last stop before catching their separate trains back home, and the thought followed them just as the falling daylight.

“On a Sunday afternoon..,” she sang Groovin’ loudly as they slowed their pace. He smiled. It was Saturday. She had only suggested the song to him that morning and it wasn’t one of their songs, yet.

They could easily live in one of these places, narrow and long, winding inwards, calm. There would be a small verandah with cheap aluminium rails, the kind you see in some houses near the beach, with cycles parked out. Afternoons would be strong tea and a playlist that switched between his, hers, and theirs. They’d sit with friends in summer and in rain, which meant they’d have to make friends here first. The long winding house would be a mystery that opened itself just to the two of them, with partitions for walls and ceramics taken out only during tea. Rent would probably be up the roof though so it’s best they didn’t gamble their chance at business. Would it be odd, living among all of them? Are only Jews allowed to occupy places here? Their music wouldn’t gel with the aesthetic, no. And they were glass-people, not ceramic. Kochi wasn’t their place to be, though they’d miss Shahabaz Aman.

 “Life would be ecstasy, you and me endlessly – ” , ending the song she dropped her head sideways and swiveled, stepping on and off the shade. Like during waves at the beach except he didn’t have to hold her from moving further away as she swayed back to him.

The melancholy suddenly taking over soon after the song ended, as if remembering their impending close, she asked, “What happens when I leave?”

He stopped to watch dreamcatchers hung between the buildings, pretending like he hadn’t heard. It was sad when she was sad.

“Am I Lola Milford?” She was watching him intently.
“No,” prompt came his reply and they continued walking towards the synagogue, brushing past the returning crowd, neither facing the other. He didn’t want them to drown, it was up to him now.

“Why not?”

And as if suddenly deciding to lift the mood, she cheerfully jumped, almost like she might break into dance again to yet another song.
“Am I missing any of her 4 listed attributes? Para para!” Demanding an answer, threatening to pull his fat cheeks.
He gave it a pause.
“We’re too precious to be characters in a book.” He was serious, unlike his usual grinning self, still not looking her in the face.

“You mean we aren’t? Nobody’s too precious.” She stopped hopping and walked by his side again, with a face that looked like it’d been sad for far too long and had just cheated on a quick short break, and was back to being the sad self again.
They stayed silent and walked on, neither minding the surrounding anymore.

They halted in their tracks and sighed. The sign at the deserted synagogue read, “CLOSED ON SATURDAYS.” They stared at the silent white building for a while and then at the clock on its high wall.
He was slow but stern with his reply, filling in the shoes she’d left a while ago, his shadow falling on her as he turned.

“We aren’t in Lola, because you aren’t leaving. And neither am I.”

The frame coyly shifts away, and we’ll never know if the two kissed before they made their ways back home.

Closed on Saturdays.

Winter – Romance

I met G on New Year’s Eve 2016 at Mandi House.

It was winter. The best part of winter. When it’s cold but not too much.
You can smoke fumes out of your mouth in the thick morning air while walking to class. Peas still sprout when soaked overnight and Parachute oil hasn’t frozen in its entirety in the bottle. You wear just enough layers to not need a bra (at least the less endowed ones), yet do not have to hide your cute sweater under another quilted jacket. The chilly wind against their scantily clothed chests hasn’t eaten into the rickshaw bhayyas’ pace in the mornings, yet.

Shaving of course is out of the question.

At this point, I need to confess a couple of things. My roommate had been away for almost two months, and I was thoroughly enjoying it.
I lived in my natural habitat of a cluttered room, the little floorspace was filled with copies of The Hindu and printed fliers of IAS coaching material, collected and shoved into my bag after class. I’d started wearing bhasmam regularly because it reminded me of people I love. My warrior of a chair carried a backbreaking pile of dirty clothes to topple over any moment and I went to class in the clothes I went to bed in. The bed itself was filled with Haldiram’s Aloo Bujia, a thin plastic cover of 5 tomatoes bought for 10, and leftover packs from previous tiffin any time of the day.
I fit my body in there somehow.

Evenings were dry and beautiful with an occasional warm drizzle, and by all means I avoided being in my room for long. It’s when (home)sickness slowly creeps in and lodges itself on your neck to stay until dinner.

I was doing India’s Struggle for Independence by Bipan Chandra. Love you Zindagi played in my room every night after I returned from the reading room. I routinely smiled at other building-mates and refrained from (/clearly avoided) talking. By this time the chetan at the sambar vada/pizza sandwich shop that had open counters and high tables knew I wanted chai to the brim, just like the chetan at office does now. Old Rajendra Nagar was filled with puppies that followed you on the roads and needed to be fed from your tiffin bits at night.

The terrace was still the only place I could see the sky wasn’t as little as it seemed from amidst all the buildings on the ground.

Probably most important bit is I didn’t have to zone into my thoughts like I do now and did before. I was living in them.

In college, I’d go to canteen alone for a lot of different reasons, and I was lucky to always have people that asked “Are you here all by yourself?”
It was only after almost a year I realized I was disappointing people with answers such as “It’s alright” cos they thought I was upset at not having company. So I later rephrased it to “Oh a friend is coming. It’s alright” and things were sorted out. Unless they decided to give me company until the friend (never) came :D.

I hadn’t talked to a soul at ORN in the course of these two months. Except the sabjiwala and Komal at my reading room reception. And New Year’s Eve was to be spent watching a play at ShriRam’s Arts Center, Mandi House. Alone.

(Yeah don’t worry, a friend was coming).

“Can I have one at the extreme back please?”

First time at a theatre alone and I had mistaken a play for a movie, and extreme back for  balcony view.
G in the second queue overhears and looks over, smiles a friendly stranger smile. I return the smile and wait for the doors to open.

On the way to the Arts Center were walls painted Inquilab Zindabad, posters of Che Guevera, lots of young and older men and women all of whom seemed like students. Reading newspaper and eating Maggi, outside shacks and shops nearby and on circles around tall trees. And all I could think was how I’d have turned out had I joined DU and studied English, or even joined for MA after B.Tech.

I wasn’t sure then, but when was I ever?

I’d quite probably have turned leftist, sat under those trees reading The Hindu, turned up in loose neutral kurtas instead of my favourite Lifestyle sweater, worn chappal instead of Converse and carried a cloth bag instead of Wildcraft. I’d probably still have turned up for this play. Probably.
At least I knew I wasn’t a literature person by then.

As soon as I get seated I realize my folly. I can hardly see the actors’ faces, having especially asked for the backseat. The play is about the revolt of 1857 and I have a leaflet about the troupe and the actors. They’re probably college students, always rushing to catch the Metro for their practice sessions in scorching summers and chilly winters. I would’ve impressed with my Doordarshan-imparted Hindi, though started from the top every time I missed a line.
I would’ve sucked with the lines.

Memorizing dialogues and scenes, indulging chai sessions between, and Maggi from that shop outside on lazy afternoons after naps. Streetplays on weekends, processions at India Gate, LeftWord Books for every book launch. Never miss a LitFest and never miss a lecture. Debate over Yechury’s points on the phone with Achan and borrow Amma’s sari for characters when I went home for vacation.

I don’t really know how differently I’d have turned out.
What if’s and I have had a romantic relationship since forever anyway.

There’s a cosy canteen attached to Centre’s right with low tables and chairs. It’s evening now and the sky is losing light, it’s getting chilly outside. I sit down with hot chowmein at an empty table. There are a couple of benches and desks outside, and through the door I can see young students in their sweaters and mufflers clicking selfies before their foods arrive.
We could all be at a tea shop in a beautiful hill station at Manali or Nainital, sipping tea and eating chowmein. Barfi could jump in any second singing Iss dil ka kya karooon with Ileana De Cruz in her long dress, shoes and pink hairband. And I wouldn’t need to get up and dance because I’d already be.

Next to me, a lady who I’m positive appeared in Taare Zameen Par to judge the painting contest comments “Isn’t Three Arts Club doing quite brilliant these days?”
She has grey cropped hair,  wears a starched saree and is seated with other older men who look like they could be college professors or The Hindu editors, with a general wise air. All neutral shades. They drink tea. I wonder if I should’ve ordered tea with my chowmein.

G appears opposite to me at my table, placing a bag on the last vacant one, and has ordered Maggi. I shift my water bottle away from G’s plate, polite. I’m hardly ever impolite to strangers. At this point I’d like to say I’m one of those I’m sure everyone’s good at heart people. I love being disappointed.

“Is it your first time to a play?” G is smiling more broadly than the summer sun.

“I’ve been to a couple back home, first time alone though.” G sits down.

“So where are you from?” “I’m from Kerala. Where are you from?” I can’t help the full sentences amidst all the smiling.

“Delhi.”

I smile broadly as well.
Like when you find the flavor of tic-tac you were rummaging for in a large bucket at a supermarket. Except there’s no way we knew each other’s flavors. Yet.

G is an arts graduate. PG in English Literature. Civil Services preparation.
“ORN?”
“Yes. You go to Vajiram?”
“I go to Sriram.”
“Evening batch?”
“Morning, actually. You must go in the evening batch?”
“Morning, actually.”

Later as we walk out from the canteen into the tall trees, under the orange lamps I can spot G’s backpack that says WildCraft. I smile stupidly, like Swetha says I often do when seated by the window in our office bus.

Everyone should have the privilege to meet themselves, sometime.

I had earlier decided I’d remain stoic for as long as I could hold out. But that New Year night I talked to more humans over Never Have I Ever. And realized I’d always, always loved people.

When Umadri packed up and left for college in late May, I asked her to list out the things and people she’d miss (yea I do that). On top of the list, was who she was when we were at ORN.

Some days I think I’d give anything to go back to being the unfuck-withable dragon-hunter. Impenetrable to my mother’s calls to life as we know it.

Why is life not the way I know it?

IMG_20161216_175545                                               Old Rajendra Nagar, Winter 2016

Cry

I’m a crier.

I mean I own a weak-ass heart that feels too much.

It’s funny because I didn’t quite cry for a long time, although I was sad for the longest time. Then came this study leave before sixth semester exams in college when I cried 24×7.

Like after a breakup you look at your face in the washbasin mirror but realize it’s already wet all over with tears.
Like you don’t cry for two decades, and then you do.
And you can’t stop.

So one evening after my second last exam I cried to someone, and although I didn’t think it was possible, this time I cried it out.
Well, most of it. Which is when I started crying for all the right (you decide) reasons.

For those of us that feel too strongly, crying just happens to be the easiest release in a world where we’re a minority. It isn’t reserved just for when I’m really sad or really happy, it’s for everything overwhelming in between.

At how time conned us, and didn’t let me meet my parents’ magnificent younger selves.

As most 70/80s songs play, I can see my father contesting elections in engineering college (to lose, of course) in black & white, while my mother (in color, cos she has described the shades of her college saris to me) is studying her ass off in medical college hostel. Achan vehemently yells SFI slogans in CET while Amma scoffs at party members in MCH, and they both listen and tap their feet to the same songs, but I never got to see or hear any of it.

Neither know at the time they’d marry each other. Or that they’d have 3 kids who’ll listen to them humming these songs (with a much much lower tempo) some 15 years later on moonlit nights at engineering college quarters, sleeping on their shoulders and laps and chests. So I was upset when I finally heard the originals of Aayiram Padasarangal Kilungi  – “that’s NOT how you sing it, those are not even the lyrics, this record is all SO wrong”.
Because that’s not how Achan sang it to us.

Some days I wonder at how beautiful the world looks during sunrise and wish I could broadcast it across people’s minds in a network so we can feel one another (okay Amal I know that sounds wrong on many levels).
Or how we could both be looking at it and I could be thinking of you right now, and you could be thinking of me, but we’d never know.

And the sunrise could be a Kathak performance or a ghazal recital, or two lines of a brilliant poem or a song or an instrument, the beauty of how its boundlessness dissolves us into one, for as brief and fleeting a moment it be.

Like listening to Vijay Yesudas’ Malare and remembering that’s the closest I can listen to his father’s voice sing it, and how we weren’t lucky enough to belong to the generation whose lives can be traced along Yesudas’ songs.

Or those dusty college windows with sunlight streaming into classrooms and how there was never such a romance as Premam to enjoy all of that on evenings after classes, how I never had the appetite for those back then either.

Of how we were (I mean I was) ugly and sweaty and sick dressers in school (and college, pfft) and how the people and the happiness was innocently believed to be ‘a trial version of what’s to follow’ yet the trial was the best there ever came.

That there was this magical duet of If I Lose Myself we practised during monsoon 2015, when the song could hardly be heard over the patter on chetan’s studio roof, that we never took a video of, that the world never got to see, that’ll die in team memories.

Or of how we cycled through the college forests at Madras at 4am on borrowed bicycles after placing a wrist watch on loan, stopping under orange streetlamps for breaths and shouting across roads, turning in zigzags as trucks passed us by, not knowing it would be our only time.

Of how often I deserved to lose so many from my life yet how they always stayed. And stayed.

Of longing to have known certain people just a little bit more, and to have hung onto certain chapters of our lives just a little bit longer.

How life is short and life is unfair and life is cruel and yet how it comes back together to us every time. And just how much we endure in those hopes. Alone.

Of the stories we hear delivered, and how there remains so much more untold.
Of how no poetry is more beautiful than the conversations we leave unexplored.

And at the end of the day, how we all deserve more.
So much more.

I know most of this is worth smiling over. But you can only smile so much.
And then you can only cry.

No?

Trust me, you’re alive :)

These have been a couple of long days, long weeks, long months. The much-awaited weekend’s coming. The plan is to snuggle into that nice cosy couch and lie there all day as the warmth of home wraps you in and lulls you to sleep.

But you know what they say. Life is a jerk.

And before you know it, Life has busted it all – even that little plan to sleep all day. You’re on fast-sinking ground, shrouded in darkness. Lying amidst broken fragments of something fragile yet wild, threatening to drown you. It’s a while before you reach calm and make out shapes in the black. And when you do, you gasp – it’s you. It’s all you, shattered to pieces. You’re in the graveyard of your own life, and they weigh you further down to darker hollows.

Is this a joke? Retribution? What for? You sit on your knees and cry. It’s not like you were actually going to sleep all day. This so-called Life is stupid, okay? The ground seems to appear steady now. Maybe it was punishment for some wrongdoing, either way it’s over now, you think. Everything’s going to go back to normal.

So if it’s all over, why does it hurt so bad? It’s shearing you apart, so why aren’t you dead yet?

Then the pain sets in. It’s too real to ignore now. Somebody, make it stop!

You grope around in the dark for an opening, a door, an escape- it should be there. Every feel of a shard opens up a new gash on your skin. Like an idiot, you hug at the infinite walls that surround you and yell for help. Scoop out handfuls of damp earth from the ground in a desperate attempt to escape. All the while crying like the little lost child you are. You tell yourself hopelessly that a time-turner is going appear any moment now, and you’ll be back in your living room again. Everything’s going to go back to normal.

But nothing happens, your calls for help are the only company you got. With that knowledge, you collapse onto the floor. You lie there for a while with your eyes still wet, thinking about the warm couch in your living room. It’s all gone. The dark, damp and debris are all that remain. You look around- Denial isn’t going to help, this will be your new ‘home’ now.

As if on cue, the cold ground kisses you, and somehow it doesn’t scare anymore. You acquiesce to what is perhaps the only show of affection the place has to offer. You slowly stop crying. You learn to see in the dark. The broken everything doesn’t cut you anymore, and the persistent prickling pain grows to be a part of you. It’s tricky, but you’ll learn when it’s your turn. *

Though your head blasts with a hundred, nay, a million questions, all the likes of “Why me?” you learn to embrace it. Life goes on. People pass you by from another world, smiling. “Everyone has battles”, probably answering that question in your head. Of course everyone does, you smile weakly. The ground kisses you again.

The dark doesn’t make you feel lonely anymore, the damp is as warm as it’ll be now on, and debris that perhaps if pieced together can paint a fraction, if not the whole picture that you once hoped to create. You remember some quote about black and white keys in a piano. You just never thought they could get SO black.

But you know what they say, Life is a jealous ass. Jealous of comfort in agony even. And just like that, Life kicks you out into the (regular) world, once again blinding you.

Though this time, it’s the sun, isn’t it? It has to be. What else could be so warm and bright?

It takes a moment to take it all in. The world is back. THE WORLD IS BACK!

You smile at first. It’s a weird little feeling, smiling like that after such a long time. Then it becomes a beaming grin. In no time, you’re jumping to catch the brilliant rays. You roll on the warm earth and laugh like a crazy old man. You lie on the soft grass and kick your arms and legs about like an ecstatic toddler. And everyone’s staring, everyone’s watching and maybe they all think you’ve lost it – and you know it doesn’t matter.

Because they didn’t see it when you were broken to pieces and plunged into a hole in the ground. They didn’t hear you scream and plead at lifeless walls that only echoed your cries for help. They didn’t see you curl up on the wet floor and hug yourself for warmth. They don’t know about the sleepless nights you spent, begging Life to go back in time, to make everything okay.

It’s not the world that’s come back. It’s you.

Some stories need a prelude to make sense. And some still won’t.

You slowly walk into your apartment. Everything is same in the world, yet you know nothing is from now on. Maybe the same things won’t bring joy to you anymore. Maybe the same people won’t mean company anymore. You have changed, you have grown and that’s okay. That is life.

You find the couch in its peaceful corner still. Blissfully unaware that you’ve been on a tumultuous journey that’s now a part of your past, that you’re spent and exhausted but mostly just happy to be back home.

As much as you’d love to cry your heart out into it, and recount in excruciating detail how you had to crawl your way slowly back up – All that can wait. Right now is time for the much-awaited lullaby and sleep.

And Life is beautiful, right there.

* NOT A THREAT 😛

HAPPY NEW YEAR 🙂

Edit : Somebody told me this article sounded like rap-lyric when read in haste. It is in fact about a time in when I was depressed and low. And perhaps a lot of it sounds cliche (now that I read it after some time, I can look at it objectively), but every line was penned with emotion to my own days.