ajab see chahat

Sensory Issues pt 2

The most important attributes of animals, whether common to all or peculiar to some, are, manifestly, attributes of soul and body in conjunction, e.g. sensation, memory, passion, appetite and desire in general, and, in addition pleasure and pain. For these may, in fact, be said to belong to all animals. But there are, besides these, certain other attributes, of which some are common to all living things, while others are peculiar to certain species of animals. The most important of these may be summed up in four pairs, viz. waking and sleeping, youth and old age, inhalation and exhalation, life and death. We must endeavour to arrive at a scientific conception of these, determining their respective natures, and the causes of their occurrence.

– On Sense and the Sensible, Aristotle (tr. J.I Beare)

Memory

A thick mattress holds the body, but it also holds a child within. Years ago, when summers ended in July, and September lifted the curtains off cooler Octobers, I remember thick mattresses lining the entire floor of a house. The house still exists, but it has been refashioned into something that can house bitter familial feelings that are almost prophetic by now. I haven’t seen the Ship of Theseus rebuilt, so all remains is the past.

The winding stairs had convenient corners to hide and eavesdrop. I could hear things, but not make out the gravity of them. The adults seemed to always be having more fun. They could talk about sex, and boys, and bodies, and all I could do was sit in a corner and sulk. Not that I did not understand things; the party in question did not welcome me due to my physical stature, the age factor. So I wrote, and read, and wrote, and read. I hoped to do something scandalous in those winding stairs. When my cousin invited over the boy who clearly liked me but not my impassiveness to his advances, she made out with him in the same spot, and I was on the lookout. I thought it was my summer to grow up. I resorted to smoking, sitting there for hours. I had grown up, the adults had grown out of whatever special, mischievous bond they shared. Like an heirloom it was to be passed down to us, but it did not reach my lap until I entered university and found the thrill in just spending all night with people who too, would rather do that than anything else. Except maybe go to Europe. Or Thailand. New York.

My naani’s house had only one floor, and a big, empty terrace used to dry pulses and other seeds. Sometimes chillies. After my aunt died and my kathak lessons stopped, my naana built another floor, just to have new space that grief had not yet permeated. Weak bodies (age factor) led to this old couple shifting my dead aunt’s stuff to a new room on the second floor, and they had to live with grief in the same old spaces. Once my brother saw her in his dream, once she visited one of my aunts in Kolkata. This spirit induced from grief was out to haunt everybody. She never visited me. So I visited her, in that room with her physical reminders. I’d open the window, sit and smoke, let the grey of Marlboro Advance, or Red (was still a teenager) mingle with the smoke in the backyard – somebody was always burning something, or preparing the feed for the cattle. I’d spend hours reading here, and I’d end up falling asleep. I was prepared for any scenario in which she would visit me. A disgruntled woman asking for her favourite blanket back, or asking me to stop using her bed, or bumming a smoke. She never did come, and I was getting too old for phantomasies (n. phantom fantasies).

I haven’t been to either of these ancestral homes in years now. Turns out the winding staircase at my daada’s place is also under renovation. There’s still space to hide away in, to tuck yourself and eavesdrop. Nobody visits the house; the adults are not talking anymore.

The terrace of the place where I am staying now reminds me of these houses – the steep climb, the cemented floors, the plants. I stand and smoke, sometimes I lie down on my neighbour’s sofa and just look at the sky. If I sink in deep enough, silence encumbers all, and nothing bad has happened to me yet. I wait for it to rain.

Summer has extended its stay beyond our expectations. I wake up every day with the hope of using my pink umbrella, but the sky pries away the clouds with its fingers and opens one eye – the Sun – and gleams upon tar and skin alike.

The days refuse to slow down, despite the delay in the air. I have lost all sense of urgency in my life. I wake up with the sun and spend a good hour in bed smoking. It doesn’t please me to do so, but nothing pressing comes up. Nowhere to be, nobody to talk to.

I had written this a few days ago, not sure where to fit it. In doing so, summer left the doorstep resentfully, leaving behind puddles full of tears for me to navigate through. I get to leave work early, which means nobody else is back when I am. The couch is all mine, and the promise of rain is delivered upon.

There’s a particular song that comes to mind when I think of these spaces. In the heaviness of summer, this song would cut through the afternoon naps of adults, and the mysterious world-building of kids. Somebody grown – but not enough – would be walking around with a phone, and the melody would waft through the windows, teasing me and then leaving me incomplete.

तुम्हारी उल्फ़त में जानेजाना

हमें मिली थी जो एक धड़कन

हमारे सीने में आज तक वो

तुम्हारी धड़कन धड़क रही है

In order to love you, the life of my life

I was given one heartbeat

To this date, in me

That heartbeat of yours rings on

Another season is passing, age is nudging me forward. Everyday, memories from a life far off (and DEAD) live on in me.

mitch epstein

marcin bialas

nindiya — sleep. here’s what i slept to two days ago