Timely

Holding a pen after a long time, when your hand shakes and fingers betray to keep a symmetry of similar letters, is a pleasure. You feel like coming back home from a far-away place and finding that old scent that you had left it with. But now you are new. Coming back is always like that. It makes us feel new to our old places.

How old is our past? Does it start with the moment before and end with your paperboats of childhood? For some it is like the backward journey of a night train. The stations are known by the whistles, sudden brakes and old station-master's familiar voice. The green flag looks black then. But you can still take a deep breath and just know. There is no past in an arrival.

We all search for patterns in our life, in others' lives. When we find one, we rest; when we don't we call it consequence. Sentiments, deepest of them, are a lot like glue. They can not let go. They stick to one's heart and hurt the most when you try to detach them.

In coming back home, looking back at past and remembering how attached you were - there is no cycle in that, there are no triangles and no conclusion. Strangely, there is a great air of certainty in knowing, you do not even write them for yourself.

Then we realize, leaving them is as important as it was in living.

Comments

Usha Pisharody said…
Glad to have read it, today. Timely. There have been notions of the whys and wherefores of life; of wondering why on Earth does it hurt so much, memories, and thoughts of others you knew, of wanting to go back to a familiar place, knowing you cannot. There is no pattern in grief, or even in happiness.
The wise sages know it. Your last line could have been theirs, had they known how to tell an unthinking generation of it.
Thank you Soumya.
(Still reeling from the shock of hearing a former student's sad demise, and everything I read, somehow fits. Thank you. )
Kalm-na said…
Soumya, this is so Timely that i read it, this day n time.

"leaving them is as important as it was in living"

Excellent.

Had to come back to this blog, homecoming, today, when I wanted that homely solace, which knows me so well.

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