Verba Volant, Scripta Manent

I write letters – it’s what I do. Writing to someone is an act of love for me, and having others write to me was, and continues to be, a source of great comfort and joy.  

However, it has been a while…a really, really long while since I could bring myself to willingly pick up the pen and write – whether it’d be for the sake of my oft-forsaken introspection, the occasional birthday letters or, for that matter, the rare piece of prose.

For words once written read the same regardless of the time that may have passed. Words that mean something, at least at the time of being written, and it is not difficult to fool oneself into believing that they continue to mean something irrespective of the context leading up to it and thereafter.

As it stands, what had once been a source of great comfort was now a mockery of the very things it represented. My much treasured collection of postcards and letters, instead of standing testament to the fact that I was once loved and cherished, were now reduced to bitter reminders of what I once had and subsequently lost.

It was as if the written word had stopped being my love language.

However, things do find a way of coming back to you. I’d have the occasional friend sending me pictures of notes I’d written to them long ago. They were reminders, as sporadic as they might be, of the fact that perhaps, my words did mean something to others, if not in the same capacity as they meant to me. 

Yet the reminders coalesced into a singular, definite realisation only when one day, a dear friend happened to ask me if I still had the letter she had written to me by way of farewell, when she was in her final year at our college. 

While I looked for that specific letter (so that she could have a picture of it as well), I wound up leafing through my collection once again. I was steeling myself for feeling that familiar anguish that I’d come to associate with all those words, but her letter served to remind me instead of my capacity for love and kindness. That I mattered enough for her, and in hindsight, all those others who wrote to me, to earnestly endeavour towards penning it down. 

And here is why I finally found myself willing to pick up the pen after all. For time will pass, people will change and move on, but their words remain  unchanging, indelibly printed onto the parchment of  their time, their relationships with us. And we write, not in order to be remembered in perpetuity, but to leave behind testaments to our best selves. For others to remember us by, even if they have little else to go on with. 

And so I shall write. So that I may be remembered, fondly, lovingly, as I remember the others.

Memento Mori

Image Credit: Hayley Blanck

Yes, it’s an oft heard refrain. Remember your mortality. Remember that you can’t live forever, that there is – notwithstanding alternative beliefs about multiple reincarnations – this one life, one only life and your days are numbered, your breaths measured…if not by some divine ordinance, then by the sheer uncertainty of our actions and their consequences.

You can never know when the reaper comes knocking at your window, the spear ominously hanging off his shoulder.

How often do we take cognizance of this, though? How often are we mindful of our limited time here?

You would disagree. Of course, our birthdays serve to remind us of the years slipping away from our grasp. Of course, the progression of our lives is invariably charted towards sustenance, toward longevity. The inevitability of death is staved off in name of goals, meaningful pursuits, carousing even.

However, as is said, knowing and realising are two different things.

Let me backtrack a little here – some context is in order. To begin with, I am fortunate to not have lost someone very close to me yet – my maternal grandfather passed away when I was 14, but back then I was perhaps still too young to fully comprehend what such loss entailed. In hindsight, I naturally wish I had cherished my time with him more.

In a span of the past three days, we received news to this effect about two people.

One was a former caretaker to my maternal grandmother and had lived with the family for well over a decade. Scratch that, she had become family, so much so that we looked forward to seeing her just as much as the rest of my maternal family on our yearly trips to New Delhi. She would accompany my grandmother to our house when nani would come to live with us for a couple of months, and while her equation with my nani wasn’t exactly pleasant, she loved me and my mother to bits. I have fond memories of being treated to her sumptuous cooking, of her taking care of my daily schedule whether it was waking me up for school or ironing my uniform the night before, of my mother and I taking her out to eat or to shop for sarees and jewellery.

She was diagnosed with oral cancer a year ago. A stout, sturdy lady who never needed medicines and could work all day long even at the age of 55 was reduced to a mere shadow of herself.

I remember the last conversation I had had with her. It was over six months ago, and she had already returned to her native town by then. “I’ll come for your wedding,” she had said, and I was at a loss for words, for marriage was as such inconceivable for the next couple of years, and who knew?

I don’t remember what I said, but I wished her well and expressed hope at being able to see her once again, hopefully recovered. We would invite her to come visit, despite knowing it was a journey she’d be unable to make as such.

I had once wished to learn cooking from her. Had tried even, five years ago when she had been here and I was yet to start college, but it never materialised into full-fledged lessons.

And to think my grandmother would instruct her about her role in dressing my grandmother for her cremation. My nani lives to this day, hale and hearty.

The other was my paternal grandparents’ neighbour. She was a widow, and both her sons were settled abroad. And yet, I had not seen a livelier, happier person in her stead. Not only a huge support to my dada-dadi but an aunt to us kids – we both addressed and regarded her as our masi. My cousins had been, in some way ,closer to her than I ever could be, courtesy having lived with my grandparents during their childhood, but she had been no less fond of me. 

You could say she was family as well.

And just as unexpectedly some three months ago, she was rushed back home from Australia on account of a paralytic attack. It devolved to brain cancer, albeit at the first stage, and she had every chance of making a full recovery. I had only met her just last week. Chemo was yet to take away all of her hair, and while visibly weakened, she seemed to be pulling through just fine. “All these years, I’ve never even had a fever, and now look at this.” Yet another woman deprived of her sense of self-sufficiency.

My mother and I had not stayed for long, promising to come back soon. As if we took it for granted that she was still around.

What a folly to think that way, indeed.  

Being afflicted with cancer is no longer akin to signing your death warrant these days. And perhaps that is why, on both occasions of receiving the news, I stopped dead in my tracks. 

It was just how it was meant to be, one would say.

Death as a concept, an event even seems surreal to me to this date. An idea I can barely wrap my head around. For it doesn’t take long to get back to the humdrum of daily life, does it? Regardless of how severe the loss has been.

However, for the few moments of disillusionment that do manage to catch hold of you, it’s worth the thought – what do we really take away with us when we die? An identity, painstakingly crafted through the proverbial sweat, blood and tears, generously supplemented with acquisitions galore. All of it left behind.

Except for the memories, also equally subject to the ravages of time.

Which is not to say that I advocate for nihilism as a way of life. That, for the fear of eventual oblivion, I treat everything with a certain degree of irrelevance.

Nonetheless, I’m no stranger to the melancholy of transience. And yet, if mono no aware is anything to go by, it is that beauty lies in impermanence.

I, for one, would be driven mad for the lack of a pursuit. Meaning, whether contrived or intrinsic, has to be sought after. That pursuit is just as undeniable as death itself.

I suppose it is all about walking the fine line between the two eventualities, in our own search for that absolute, unvarnished truth. And so it is.

Misgivings

It wasn’t often that she took to the bottle – hardly in fact – but the days that she chose to become, well, inebriated enough to stop thinking, she was either possessed by a devil-may-care disposition or was too melancholy to bother with anything or anyone else.

It was strange. She usually hated the aggravating effect that alcohol had on her existing frame of mind. However, like most things, she’d come to realise that the intoxicant, used in lesser, precise measures, could be a tool. Whether it’d be to put her nerves at ease in a situation too social for her liking, or to take the seething edge off her ruminations, the luxury of which she would allow herself only within the confines of her room with the unspoken assurance of being left to her devices for hours to come.

(Her father’s nonchalance at her liberty to make a drink for herself at will did come in handy at times, after all.)

Nonetheless, reverting to the occasion that warranted the use of such recreation in the first place. Well, not so much an occasion than a series of realisations acquired over time – most notably, over the past two years – which led her to worriedly introspect, confront herself even, all this while that she was home with time to spare finally.

Realisations of her not so subtle sense of disdain for people not as clever or bright as they should be (whether the need to be about one’s wits was a trait self-acquired or drilled into her through her upbringing was a question she was yet unable to answer). Realisations of her misplaced arrogance with respect to her understanding of the world, her character traits which in her opinion placed her on a higher pedestal than most others. Realisations of her deep-rooted distrust derived either from such aforementioned contempt or fear of being trivialised that kept most at bay, while she was rendered bitterly complaining about the disappointment arising from people tripping over her own deliberately laid traps and obstacles in order to reach her.

All of which served to instil some form of misanthropy in her mannerisms, to say nothing of her thoughts.

It was indeed strange. She retreated further and further into the fortress of her mind, deluding herself with the prospect of being entertained only by those worthy and capable enough of recognising her defence mechanisms, even as she remembered the grim reality that no sane person would be willingly subject to an acid test over and over. Her concern, that the first, preliminary layer of filtration shouldn’t suffice to keep her safe from being betrayed later, served as little consolation. 

But the arrogance, the flimsy assurance of having something of your own to claim…it is what kept her from bowing down and meeting the objects of her misanthropy halfway. 

Easier to keep your head high and march forward, in the everlasting hope that you stand to gain better than what you left behind, isn’t it?

Even if it meant going back to a book and a glass of wine, people be damned. 

Incertitude

It is easy to take your own self for granted. I remember a time when writing was not merely a convenient mode of expression, but a necessary fallback against the vagaries of the world.

I can’t seem to place it any longer. Thought self-care could be put on the backburner while I ran after things, often not any less material. Never thought I’d start viewing everything from a life-or-death perspective. Nothing ever is

However, I often forget my own pithy observations about life and the ideal ways to counter its bittersweet snares.

Nonetheless, I itch to write. Something. Anything. In times where my inner realm stands charred in the flames of my self-loathing and its worldly manifestation dangles precariously on the edge of maddening hopelessness, I don’t have it in me to go flailing before another entity in order to be rescued.

The last time I did that, it was akin to being saved from a cesspool only to be thrown in quick sand. No, thank you.

Thus the drive to turn upon what remains of my survival instincts. The lure of creativity, the brief illusion of power -  to be what I’d wish to be, to run free and unthinking…maybe writing is not something I could ever forget, despite making myself believe otherwise…

…

He doesn’t bother reading through the rest of the entry. “Pessimist,” he almost sighs in response.

I continue to regard him steadily, my gaze turning ever so hostile at the slight posed to me by his lack of patience with respect to my work. “You could at least finish.”

“I don’t need to.”

“Just because I may have conveyed the same thoughts maybe a thousand times to you previously, the written form has more to it than the content.”

“I’m not here to appraise your writing skill. How much more flattery do you need?”

“Limitless.”

“Insecure.”

“You don’t talk.”

“Why not? Easier to point fingers, no?”

“Let me shatter your glass walls next, then.”

My hand snakes up to his, tentatively grazing his fingers. It takes all of my strength to remain composed – my eyes are beginning to cloud, my breath already coming and going in heaves.  I could do with more than just holding hands, but it is all I can allow myself to seek.

He grips my hand nevertheless. “What is it?”

“You know.”

“I do. I still need to hear it from you.”

I regard him, both a plea and an unspoken understanding in my eyes. Of course he knows – we are cut from the same cloth after all. Forever caught up in our heads, unable to demarcate reality from the veritable battlefields which our minds are. Ruminating over our past selves, grieving for mistakes in a manner almost akin to exhuming corpses when they should just be left buried, dead and forgotten to the world except to our own selves.

“Does it matter?”

He doesn’t misunderstand the question. “Never mind, I won’t hold such repetition against you.”

And so I tell him, perhaps for the thousandth and one time, wishing he would simply read the rest of my scribblings instead.

…

However we write, with the tiniest of hopes, for it to be read. It doesn’t matter whether it is the world, or just one person; writing is also an exercise in vindication, complete only upon external acknowledgement.

It is also a measure of calculated courage over the false bravery of the spoken word.

I write to you, my friend. There are, of course, a dozen threads in my head needing some form of expression, closure even. Not all of them would result in the sort of reaffirmation I need at the moment.

Reassurance that I’m not the only one, certainly not mad enough to be feeling this way. Recognition of my rather skewed perspective on life and the reasons for the same.

I weave words into a veil, hiding behind it while yet calling out to you. I drew that line myself.

For you see, I look to not delude myself with the temporary comfort of your embrace, but stand on my own two feet while drawing strength from your faraway presence. The idea, of ‘help’ being a call away, is empowering in itself.

After all, did you not tell me that “darling, you see, no heroes are coming for you – grab your sword and don your own armour”?

Cognizance

Spare me the rhetoric, the meaningless diatribes.

She turns halfway from the window, her gaze resting at the silhouetted hallway stretching before her.

Hear yourself. You are here, now…living, breathing. Why must they forget?

A hand lies against the glass, misty with the rain. Dark clouds sweep the skies, bathing the world beyond in a permanent twilight.

See yourself.  Can you?

The chiffon folds flutter away in the breeze, settling against her slender frame now and then.

How long will you run away for?

She stands still, keenly aware of the quiet which surrounds her, the silence permeating into her very being,

You know who you are, don’t you?

The hand clenches against the glass, belying the restlessness tearing through her…capable of shattering the surface into a million fragments if it were a force of its own.

There is no other way of knowing the world.

Her gaze now settles at the sight before her, taking in the cold yet invigorating picture that the clouds seemed to be painting, enlivening her surroundings with that infallible sense of just being – the essence of being one with the universe gnawing at her very core.

Burn those shackles down.

She thinks of fire. A conflagration, raging and blazing its way through, tiny flames sparkling and dancing in the wind.  There was something about elemental fury – water, fire, air, earth: so very essential to existence and matter.

Is it a reflexion or a paroxysm?

Her imagination gives way to mighty waves lashing over sands, only to shift to a raging storm kicking up dust everywhere. So in tune with her conflicts…that mental turmoil, driving her mad with equal parts exhilaration and agitation.

But you fight on, one battle after the other.

Even though they were fought in the vivid landscape of her mind. Alter egos would spring to life, repressed desires would come to the fore – each instance scripted as close to reality as possible as if it could be brought alive in a parallel universe.

And realisations beckon you.  

Her gaze is fixed at the play of natural forces before her, while she continues to mould herself, dream by dream into an instrument of expression, attuned to everything that is characteristic of this world.

You have always sought creativity.

Coveted it to the point of vandalizing her psyche, only to realize it lay in her hands, in her will and courage to be.

The world awaits your glory.

She steps beyond the glass walls, breathing into the winds…dreaming of that fire setting her core aflame, alive.

Tribulation, Avowed

I’m not going to start with my usual line. Neither am I going to whine about how my creative instincts seem to be in the clutches of despair and morbidity.

But lest I forget that I was…still am, capable of creation. Of expression. Of reaching out to the very essence of the person(s) witness to my craft.

Strange that the thought of being able to do so still drives me, in midst of being absolutely convinced that few would try and do the same with me.

It is my fault, after all. No one tries to break through a shell without a vested purpose. Or so as I believe.

Disappointment turns to disillusionment…to impassive acceptance. Reality has changed colours – from being wholesome to revealing ugly sides to going back to face-value status quo. To a numbing realization – what’s the point of it all?

Save for that flicker of hope, defying every attempt at vanishing.  A hazy thought here, a vague outline of the future there…but I soldier on, one day at a time. I’d stop and think why, but there is no answer to that.

Just as there is no answer to what awaits me ahead.

So I fly blindly, mistaking denial for equanimity. Just giving into impulse, not thinking about the consequences…relying on the sole belief that nothing earth-shattering can happen to me anyway, that as long as I don’t kill myself or jeopardize myself irretrievably, nothing else should matter.

To admit all this is to risk being called a martyr, to be held up for being insufferable. And yet, I can only write what I know, what I feel.

I would ask, but I wish for little. I would think, but it is futile. I seek to be left to myself, against the naivete of my very core, longing for affirmation.

I wait, even though it was never my wont to do so. I watch as my life unfolds and unravels.

And I dream. Not of salvation but of strength, of unbridled courage. Of renewal.  

After all, I never meant for anyone else to pick up the pieces. 

Stifling Abstractions

Oh, it has been a while. A long, long while indeed.

So long, that I can all but rant, unencumbered and unthinking for once, driven merely by this sense of…frustration, I suppose? This inexplicable yearning that gnaws at me, suffocating me, making me want to run.

Run and run, and not look back. Run to the very edge of the abyss and jump into oblivion.

But I can’t…I won’t. I’m here out of my own volition. I made the choice, didn’t I? Everything is nothing but my creation – the world my mirror, a painful reflection of my helpless beliefs.

Nevertheless, shadows shall follow me to the death. I cannot obliterate light; neither can I wipe away the scars of my faults from my very being, not till I give up on pulling the scabs off time and again.

Then again, patience has never been my virtue.

…

“I can’t write.”

It was a mere statement, made quietly but unequivocally. He looked in her direction. As always, she didn’t look up, choosing to stare away at the sight before as she sat near the window, curling up in a manner that struck him as deliberately despondent.

He shook his head. “Of course not. You mean you can’t write prose,” earning him a glare from her.

“Yes, unlike for some lesser mortals, journal entries and random scribblings do not suffice for writing, you see.”

“Now that’s more like it. Why don’t you pen that down as a line to start with?”

The intensity of her glare only grew. “Stop being a wisecrack for once, will you?”

He raised his hands in a giving-up gesture. “I’m saying nothing.”

She sighed, frustration evidently wrought in her features. “I want to write, you know? And yes, for all my eloquence, for all the words I know, this is the best I can do.” And the voice was quiet and matter-of-fact in its tone yet again.

He almost smiled. I know you’re not looking to be empathized with.

 “Say if I ask you to write a letter to me.”

“…I won’t be able to write one. It’d be half-hearted at best.”

“And why do you say so?”

“I can’t find my expression.”

“Writing is not something that can be unlearned, is it?”

“I can’t seem to remember it.”

“If you look for something that is not there anymore…but has taken on a different form, you won’t find it either way.”

She threw him a leveled yet wary look. He held her gaze. “Tell me if I’m wrong. Tell me if it is something as simple as longing for what you knew…”

“…or what had been hidden for so long.”

And just as abruptly, she walked out of the room.

He waited, knowing it wouldn’t be long till she internalized what she had otherwise been unwilling to face. You can’t expect something to come your way if you keep running away from it, can you?

Forever Repining

I wish I could tell you…everything. Open up as you asked me to. Be the person you saw and appreciated me for.

But what do I even say?

Perhaps this and this alone… I’m not whom you’re looking for.

I have walked into a conflict of my own volition – and you stand there, waiting for my answer, believing in your convictions to persuade me to see the light, to take the step.

“But I don’t know you

…and I wish I did.”

Strike a chord within my heart. Don’t leave me cold. Make me care. Make me love you.

I’m tired of relating to people out of a sense of duty or obligation. Make me want to seek you out, for no other reason than to be with you. Make me crave your presence, feel alive in your company.

Make me leave the realm of my mind and feel what I’d been so good at imagining so far. Make me see myself for who I am.

But that’s too much to ask, isn’t it?

So leave me to pick up the pieces of my unrealized dreams, weave them into a veil, and lie beneath it, forgotten to the world.

No trail shall be left and yet there will always be signs that would lead you to me. Make me wish, fervently, that you will heed them and come for me.

You will bring me back, won’t you?

I would tear down the walls, but I won’t. I can’t.

The quiet darkness, the sedate comfort of a narrow sphere, painstakingly built with everything I knew of with certainty.

There isn’t much to go on with, in there. Make me yearn for more, to live in the thrill than in that deadening refuge.

…

“But you saw me for who I really was…or did you?”

“I see you for who you are. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“…and you should know, that adds all the value you could possibly want.”

“But I didn’t want any.”

They met. By the riverside, with the day dying upon them and the cool breath of night starting to blow. Water always calmed her, she said, but nothing compared to the ocean and its freeing effect. But this would have to do, she mused. For all the things that we could have done together, it will have to do.

And you think I didn’t want the same, he thought, looking at her quietly as she gazed back at him in equal solemnity.

She looked away, almost smiling to herself, “We both did.”

“Yes. But you wouldn’t let me.”

She turned to face him again, leaning in to wrap her arms around his neck. “Because if I did, it’s still not what either of us is looking for.”

“And I’d kiss you, like before, but it would…”

“Be my guest.”

He settled for cupping her face, drawing her closer. “It won’t be enough of a claim, will it now?

She smiled rakishly. “Not in a million years.”

And yet she stood before him, willingly in his hold, endless thoughts skimming before her closed eyes as she waited for one to strike her mind, pierce her heart…perhaps, perhaps succinctly pinpoint the myriad of feelings he managed to evoke in her. Then again, it wasn’t him per se – it was the idea he represented, the idea she had chased blindly for as long as she could remember.

Isn’t it said, one falls more in love with the idea of falling in love rather than with someone?

She looked at him again, taking in his presence, drawing comfort from the familiarity of his being…and yet, perhaps it does takes more than mere affection to set a heart racing. She wondered what it was and whether she would ever find it.