last day away from my life

tomorrow i go back to my city.

My naani was gone for a couple of days, and she is back now. She is wearing an orange saree, she looks like those orange toffees you get so that you don’t get sick while travelling. I have only 24 hours left here, and then I will be back to my own city.

I love my city. I like walking around, looking at rich people’s houses, watching people be in a rush. I think maybe because now I have some significant changes coming my way, no idea whether good or bad, I am feeling homesick. Ladybird, which is by the way one of the most ‘self-important films which isn’t really giving you a lot to work with’ that I have seen, you have to bring your own experiences on the table to flesh the movie out – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I don’t want to work for entertainment. Not always. Anyways, in Ladybird, she walks along with her friend and looks at those dignified looking houses. That’s what I used to do in 2019, which seems to be so far away. Maybe by 2029, I will have a beautiful house of my own, in a quiet neighbourhood, and I will go on long walks and come back and not be answerable to anyone. Maybe my pet cat. But that’s it.

One thing you should know about me is that I totally think about houses in a lustful way. If you were sitting next to me in the metro and asked me to tell you about something, I would definitely tell you about a house. Not necessarily my dream house but a house. The idea that we are contained in a vessel which is contained in a bigger vessel from time to time which is in turn contained in an even bigger sphere. This goes on and on right? Are we really inside a cow’s stomach as the Hindus say? I’d rather we were in a whale’s. Maybe we are at the edge of the universe, we are the rejects. A beautiful world is out there, but out of our reach, in the middle. Highly likely, but only because I believe in the philosophy that humans have contorted humanity into an ugly ogre, and not a multi headed, multi limbed organism which moves in rhythm. Maybe I am wrong. God I hope I am wrong.

I am in love with houses. I love how they are a solid structure full of gaps to fit our lives in. It is important to have a house which loves you. If I come back home and there’s not a person to wait for me, my next solace would the cold marble floor which will simply feel like water when I lay on it and fall asleep, because my house will know. The lesson is this, we have to love every possibility and every thing which is in any ways an invention.

We are always looking for places to store things in. I store your love in my heart which is in turn put away in you who lives in my part of this world and this world is in turn tucked away in reality which is made up of so many different lives of so many different people. I love how everything can be broken down to mean something fundamental and how we have to figure out a specific way to bring it all together. Where do I fit in the - you guessed it - grand scheme of things?

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It’s 18:35 right now. It’s raining. I am cold. Here are a few things I seem to recall, like waves crashing over and over with the inside of my head. The salinity of the water is stinging the walls of my head which is in turn ringing the hollows of my ears. If you saw me right now you would see a frowning twenty year old hunched over their laptop. here are the things, because, words are in abundance.

the forty something pages my father took a printout of for my scrapbook homework in second grade; it was about lions. the show Normal People. the word disingenuous, and how i want to use it for someone. i have reconnected with my friend M after a year; he has given up on phones and strictly uses a landline now. the utter terror which awaits all of us. a dead fly in my cup of tea that i encountered this morning, the dead grasshopper in my purse, the annoying mosquito in front of me right now. how i feel like crying right now. the weeds growing in the abandoned house next door, the definite voice of a ghost which beckons you inside.

What is my life but memories fluttering through the wind?

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There’s a hindi song “chura lo na dil mera sanam” which translates to “steal my heart please lover.” There’s a line in it, after the girl ignores his pleas and his offer to give her his heart - he sings “main keh raha hu kya, tu sun rahi hai kya; tu sun rahi hai kya, main keh raha hu kya?” which is literally the same phrase reversed but the meaning changes! he says “I’m saying one thing, you’re understanding it some other way; Are you even listening, what I am trying to say?” The entire song is just him asking her to steal his heart and all she wants to know is why. I think it’s a really sweet sentiment, he wants her to be aware of what she is doing to him.

The beauty of this song is how normal the setting is and how grand the lyrics are, in their own forthright manner. I personally enjoy domesticity a lot, especially when it is a makeshift kind. in this song’s context, they don’t really live together, and she has work to do in the kitchen while all he can do is profess his love for her. I mean, isn’t that what it boils down to (if you boiled down my heart, it would turn soft pink and hard, like a candy, or an aventurine stone) - you want the grandness of love, but how can you possible escape the mundanity of life?

He tells her he can neither live without her, nor die and she mocks him and asks him if he could repeat himself a little loudly.

He replies with “kaha jo zor se, to chaaro oar se, hasenge hum pe sab, humare shor se” which! let me tell you about! He knows how the situation is nothing less than risible, she is chopping onions, he is jumping around declaring LOVE ME LOVE ME LOVE ME. He answers back - if I get any louder, other people will hear us and laugh at us because of this silly ruckus we (I) have created. Isn’t that just endearing?

sorry for being a fool and a romantic, and believing in love and bollywood.

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love!

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